So I've a disaster

gbee

What could have happened?

I've a Packlard Bell X8640 running Windows 7 and four hard drives, a 500GB C drive and three 1TB sata drives.

Yesterday my power went, and my PC would not restart. I've lost three of the drives and all contents, the power supply the cables and both DVD writers.

In my efforts to salvage one of the drives actually blew smoke and and on another PC a surface mounted item glowed red and then white hot and blew more smoke.

Only one of my three drives survived and I've lost 7 years of data, I was backed up to each other drive so had triple redundancy ~ wasn't expecting to lose all my drives in one go.

So what could have happened and any chance of recovery of the drive's data?

after_shock3000

When you say your power went, do you mean a power outage or a power supply failure?

Sounds like the PSU failed and damaged components on the PCB on the hard drives. Your data should still be intact, but it's not going to be easy to get it.
Professional recovery is probably your only option if the data is important.
If the data isn't important and you just want to try and get it back yourself, you could try and identify the damaged components on the pcb and replace them.
Obviously you'd need a reasonable understanding of electronics and you'd need to be able to solder surface mount components, so I don't know whether that is or isn't an option for you.

gbee

after_shock3000 wrote: »

When you say your power went, do you mean a power outage or a power supply failure?

Which came first? I thought it was a mains power outage, But I'm confident that it was my PC that tripped the mains, it has actually happened a few times already, but on reassembly everything seemed to work.

I've put in 3 power suppliers over time. have had a few dead drives but was always able to slave them and recover data, the drives now won't work on another PC.

after_shock3000

gbee wrote: »

Which came first? I thought it was a mains power outage, But I'm confident that it was my PC that tripped the mains, it has actually happened a few times already, but on reassembly everything seemed to work.

I've put in 3 power suppliers over time. have had a few dead drives but was always able to slave them and recover data, the drives now won't work on another PC.

So an MCB/ELCB tripped and you had to reset it?
If that's the case then it's pretty likely that the PSU caused the problem alright.

The fact that smoke came from the drive and a component got red hot when connected to a different pc is a pretty good sign that components on the drive's PCB were exposed to excessive voltage and/or reverse polarity.

Tea_Bag

would it be easier to find another identical drive and transfer over the disk inside?

gbee

Tea_Bag wrote: »

would it be easier to find another identical drive and transfer over the disk inside?

Interesting idea.

poggy

Assuming that the drive motor and wands are still ok you could find a similar drive and just swap the pcb's, has to be the same revision/firmware as far as I know.

Don't open the drives up, you will destroy the disk platters. Any practicals of dust, even at a level that is not viable will prevent the drive from operating correctly if they come in contact with the drive heads. Hdd's internals are incredibly fragile.

Fluffy88

I had a couple old IDE hard drives that were of no use so decided to take a quick look inside.
You wouldn't believe how well put together they are, no way would it be usable after you get it open coz you'll have it bent in a hoop.

And just to prove the point poggy is making the drive after 15 years was immaculate on the inside, nothing can get inside a HDD.

Monotype

Yeah, you'd definitely lose your data taking out the platters unless you do it in a clean room with an identical drive. Switching PCBs is the best chance outside professional recovery, as said above. They have to be very similar drives (you'd want to have gotten them from the same batch), I've tried it myself before with no success.

ScumLord

I think you should buy an uninterruptible power supply to protect your PC, you're going through way to many components.

gbee

ScumLord wrote: »

I think you should buy an uninterruptible power supply to protect your PC, you're going through way to many components.

I think the PC caused the problem rather than an external source, it's like a surge but generated internally.

Popoutman

Some PSUs can behave quite badly if there is ripple or fluctuations on the mains power inbound. A UPS will filter all of that oddness out and will remove one possible cause of problems. Garbage in - garbage out.
Regarding the PSU themselves, I've personally found that the cheaper end of the market tends to have more spectacular failures as there are fewer of and lower quality of safeguard components, and it has generally always been worth spending the extra 30-50 quid to get a quality well-reviewed PSU.

The older HDDs could often be salvaged by a PCB swap between batch-identical drives, but unfortunately a lot of the newer ones have much tighter tolerances in the drive mechanics and locating mechanisms meaning that a replacement PCB would have to be 'matched' to the actual drive mechanics, making a PCB swap less likely to work.

Sucky situation - been there myself in the past but not lost as much as you most likely have.

Is the PSU still under warranty? You may have a claim against the shop you bought it from, but that's a discussion for someone else to detail on.

gbee

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056657954

The last picture shows a diode that blew, whether it was just bad as a lot of these drives do this apparently, or the power supply went bad and blew it over spec remains a mystery, I have put a few PSUs into machine so it's possible that this drive was the culprit for a long, long time.

Short story, in another forum it was suggested to desolder this diode form the PCB and run the drive ~ it's WORKING ~ don't know yet if it'll work long enough to save everything ~ there's a lot of data in a terabyte and it'll take days, but recovery is underway.

Monotype

Good to hear a success story in drive recovery even it did take a bit of trouble.

So you replaced the bios chip and you desoldered a diode?

jaykay2

gbee wrote: »

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056657954

The last picture shows a diode that blew, whether it was just bad as a lot of these drives do this apparently, or the power supply went bad and blew it over spec remains a mystery, I have put a few PSUs into machine so it's possible that this drive was the culprit for a long, long time.

Short story, in another forum it was suggested to desolder this diode form the PCB and run the drive ~ it's WORKING ~ don't know yet if it'll work long enough to save everything ~ there's a lot of data in a terabyte and it'll take days, but recovery is underway.

Wow. Well done. I didn't expect this story to have a happy ending. Best of luck with it.

gbee

Monotype wrote: »

So you replaced the bios chip and you desoldered a diode?

I left the Bios in place, but desoldered the shell of the diode and put the pcb back on the same drive and that did the trick.

The diode was just dust, there was hardly anything to grip on to.

Thanks for all the help and ideas that lead to a successful solution.