It is impossible to give a definitive answer  from a distance, but the probability of two hard drives
failing simultaneously vs. the probability that the cable failed or the motherboard failed or the cable
in the motherboard socket is loose, I would think that probability of one of the latter occurences  is
certainly much higher than that of the former.  The only sure way to know is to test the hard drives in a
known working computer.  (I would not want to put a known working hard drive into this computer, unless
that hard drive had nothing on it of value.)

Dean Kukral

----- Original Message -----
From: Justin
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2005 9:18 PM
Subject: [PCBUILD] did both hard drives die?


I have a Shuttle computer with (2) 250 gig hard drives (1 western dig and 1 maxtor) and a DVD so it is
kind of cramped. It gets pretty hot, but stays below the max temp for everything. Sometimes in the summer
it gets a little too hot so I'll shut it down for a while, but this is pretty rare. I have had everything
for like 2 years.

One time I shut off my computer when everything was running fine. The next day, I go to boot it up, and
bios starts off fine, detecting everything. Right before the Windows XP screen should pop up, the
computer just sits there.

I use a boot disk. Drive C:\ is my second hard drive. My first hard drive (with the OS) doesnt show up
anywhere.

I try to repair windows on the first hard drive. No luck. Format the hard drive and reinstall windows. It
loads the install files to the hard drive, goes to restart to run the install, and says Disk Read Error.

I think maybe the hard drive is bad, so I take out the "bad" hard drive and put the second one in its
place, correctly switching the jumpers and cables. Now I have the same problem, except after I formated
and tried to install windows, I got the problem "Error Loading Operating System", or something along
those lines. Never actually got into the main installation process on either hard drive. I restared, and
same problem. Went to try the whole installation process over. It was weird because the partion that I
just formated disappeared. I reformated, and tried to reinstall again. Now when it trys to boot from the
hard drive, nothing happens, just like before, with no errors.

I tried formating each hard drive and reinstalling again, with no results. I also tried another hard
drive cable, one that I know works. I even tried another power cable from the power supply that I know
worked (taken from my working DVD drive). Both hard drives make noise (a normal one too). Any ideas what
is wrong? Not worried about data loss, have back-ups. I already formated both drives anyway. I just want
this to work.

Maybe both hard drives overheated? Or is it my mobo or something?

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