Don't you just love it when (PC Sob story)

Liam_Vegas wrote on 8/31/2005, 2:35 PM
Shut down all my stuff last night (thought it was about time I gave my PC's a rest).

In the morning tried to power up my main editing system... and it was dead. No power getting to it.

OK... so I checked out the UPS that it is attached to. That appeared to be faulty (had it for about 5 years... so I guess I can "forgive" it). Cool... I found the problem (or so I thought).

Connected the PC direct to a power strip (bypassing UPS)... and it was STILL dead. Huh?

Power supply inside the PC is now also dead!!

Went out and bought a new ATX power supply. Installed... re-connected everything... PC now boots...

BUT... seems my BIOS settings (ASUS P4P800 Deluxe) are screwed up and it has "forgotten" about my extra two IDE drives I have attached to the Promise controller (for those who have this MB - I have set the RAID controller to operate in IDE mode... not RAID).... .

The drives are appearing in the Device Manager... but are listed inexplicably as a "SCSI Disk Device" - not sure if that is significant... it's probably because they are attached to the promise RAID controller. Anyway.. they don't appear in the storage management console... so I'm stumped.

I guess I will have to extract them from their internal mounting and put them into an external USB drive and see if I can still get at the data (which I suspect will be the case).... .

And... to cap it all... it seems one of my hubs (GigE) has decided to stop working now as well... .my wireless works... just my "hot zone" where I do all my editing/network rendering is kaput.

Wow... when it rains it pours!

What the heck happened to my office last night?

I think I need to lie down.... or have a whiskey... or both.

Comments

Tinle wrote on 8/31/2005, 2:59 PM
Liam,

I wish you the best of luck in recovering your data and rebuilding your PC.

Unfortunately, I know all too well how that sort of experience feels. .

Good Luck
Liam_Vegas wrote on 8/31/2005, 3:03 PM
Luckily (actually no luck involved <really) both those drives are used for storing various stuff from Digital Juice and other libraries... so they are all "recoverable".... just the time spent doing that is simply "wasted time".

Thanks for the good wishes.
winrockpost wrote on 8/31/2005, 3:05 PM
give me weed, whites, and wine . Or whiskey

Good luck
Liam_Vegas wrote on 8/31/2005, 4:32 PM
So... I removed one of the drives and installed it into an external USB drive. Still got the same problem. The drive light comes on for 5 minutes or so... and it never appears as an available "drive/volume". Device Manager lists the drive but it has a status of "unreadable".

I guess I need to get out my drive "repair" toolkit (software) and see if it can figure out what is up.

This is certainly an unusual one... I've not often had a situation where two drives fail with exactly the same error at exactly the same time. I have an idea that maybe the promise raid controller did something to the drive. However... whatever it did... it did not completely overweite the contents of the drive (there was practically no drive activity when I first re-booted) so I just cannot believe it's all gone.

Anyone have any idea on how I could get this drive to be "visible" to the O/S?

This is weird.

Must get another drink.
craftech wrote on 8/31/2005, 6:05 PM
Liam,
If you press F2 when the Asus logo appears, do the drives show up?
If so, when you highlight them and hit Enter does the correct HD info show up?

In Windows, if you go to control panel / administrative tools/ Computer Management/ Disk management check to see if the partitions look OK or if there are any odd partitions (unknown or un-partitioned).

Is windows loading the "correct" Promise device driver? I believe for that motherboard there are two different ones and an Intel driver as well.
Hunter wrote on 8/31/2005, 6:30 PM
Had something close to this happen, so after days of pulling my hair I replaced the battery on mb. What a simple fix for a big problem.

Hunter
Liam_Vegas wrote on 8/31/2005, 6:43 PM
If you press F2 when the Asus logo appears, do the drives show up?

On my ASUS BIOS you get there by pressing the "DEL" key. Pressing F2 does nothing.

The drives are not listed in the BIOS screen... but then I am not sure if they did before - as these drives are plugged into the "extra" Promise IDE controller - not the regular IDE controller ports (I have two drives in there which work fine).

In Windows, if you go to control panel / administrative tools/ Computer Management/ Disk management check to see if the partitions look OK or if there are any odd partitions (unknown or un-partitioned).

The drives simply do not display anywhere in that utility. The only place they show up is within the Device Manager - the drives are listed but when you look ate their properies and check the volume info that's when it comes up with "Unreadable".

Is windows loading the "correct" Promise device driver? I believe for that motherboard there are two different ones and an Intel driver as well.

As far as I can tell - yes.

I've even tried the drive in yet another one of my PC's... and the drives again are unreadable... in fact I gave up as it took 20 minutes and still had not booted.

I think it is time to call Western Digital to see if they have ANY ideas. I can't believe the drives are physically damaged... but it is certainly very strange that Windows cannot mount them. Do hard drives have a place on the drive where drive information is stored? Maybe that has been corrupted.
Liam_Vegas wrote on 8/31/2005, 7:07 PM
Had something close to this happen, so after days of pulling my hair I replaced the battery on mb. What a simple fix for a big problem.

In this case the BIOS seems to be OK - at least as far as maintaining changes I am making to it.. so I doubt that would solve anything in this case. In any case... the drives temselves are unreadable now in other PC's.... so that rules out a motherboard/PC specific issue.

Edin1 wrote on 8/31/2005, 7:51 PM
You had a power surge, or your computer power supply simply died, and when it died, it produced a power surge in your system, on its outputs, the 3.3, 5, and 12V.
You are lucky your motherboard is still OK!
Or is it? Here is what has gone bad, besides your power supply (either one of these):
a) your motherboard
b) your drives
c) both motherboard and drives

I had exactly the same thing; my power supply failed, and my Asus motherboard went along with it, as well as my Seagate hard drive.
I had warranty, so I replaced the motherboard, but I had important data on the drive, and being that the drive seemed dead (not even spinning), I thought it was something fixable, and it was (usually, the most catastrophic failures have simplest causes and solutions, at least in electronics). I found that the protective diode, which is placed accross 12V to protect from reverse polarity and overvoltages (there is one on 5V as well), was burned out (short-circuited), so I simply disconnected it, powered up my drive, got my data, put the diode back, and sent the drive for replacement, just in case something else on it was bad.

So, the first thing you should do is connect your drives to another computer, to see if they can be accessed there. Then you will know if the drives are at fault or not.
Then try connecting a hard drive, that you know is good, to the same ports on that motherboard as those 2!
This should let you know what exactly is causing your problem, and what should be replaced!
Liam_Vegas wrote on 8/31/2005, 10:05 PM
Then try connecting a hard drive, that you know is good, to the same ports on that motherboard as those 2!

Good suggestion.... although I need to pick a spare drive here that I don't mind losing.

I do (did) have four internal drives in this system.. that's why I thought it would be a little unlikely for just two of them to go (via a power surge) in an identical way (they each exhibit the identical issue when plugged into other systems/external drives).

The UPS is "supposed" to be a pretty good surge protector... although who knows what may have happened overnight.

It is certainly odd that one of my hubs (connected to an entirel;y different circuit/surge protector) also failed overnight as well.

Computers can be bloody strange things (I've learned that many times over the past 23 years).

Thanks... all.. for the support and suggestions
Liam_Vegas wrote on 8/31/2005, 10:07 PM
I found that the protective diode, which is placed accross 12V to protect from reverse polarity and overvoltages (there is one on 5V as well), was burned out (short-circuited), so I simply disconnected it

Hmm... that got me thinking.... although in this case the drives definitely power up... as they are seen in Device Manager.

Or... is there any way they could "power up".. and yet still not truly be functioning due to some diode being blown?
Spot|DSE wrote on 8/31/2005, 10:32 PM
Yes, but it's rare that this would happen, I believe. We go thru this occasionally and have to use drive recovery software, which virtually always works, but it's a long, slooowww process.
how does your disk management display their status? unformatted?
The rule *seems* to be that if the drive is spinning up and not clicking...it's probably alright, even if the data on it is corrupted you can often recover most or all of it.
FWIW, seems like Promise just has a lot of problems. you're sure that's not what's giving you grief?
Edin1 wrote on 8/31/2005, 11:08 PM
As I said, you should first try them on another system, and see if they work there! Just make sure the other system has support for large drives (over 137GB) in case these drives are larger than 120GB.
So, either test should let you know, these drives in another system, or other drives on this system you're having problems with.
Both of them acting in the same way could indicate that your RAID controller is "bruised", but we won't know for sure, until you test them the way I mentioned.
It wouldn't be wise to check diodes before making sure it's the bad drives and not a bad IDE controller
It's possible that their logic circuitry is running (if 5V is OK), while mechanical portion is off (12V supply). I am not sure if this is the power arrangement on Hard Drives, it's just my guess, being that digital logic circuitry typically uses 5V.
I have just checked my Hitachi drive, and I can't find 2 diodes like in Seagate. So, let's not get in too deep for our shoes ;-)
First things first! Check the drives in another system, man!

The surge protectors are there to protect from short spikes of voltage and/or current, but a longer surge will not be suppressed. That's why always the best reccomendation in case of lightning is to turn off and unplug your electronic equipment. There is simply no surge suppressor in the world that could absorb so much energy (which is basically what they do).

And by the way, other devices could have problems, although not too obvious yet.
craftech wrote on 9/1/2005, 4:46 AM
Liam,

If your WD drive didn't come with it download Data Lifeguard Tools and Data Lifeguard Diagnostics from the Western Digital site and run some diagnostic tests on the drives.

John

PS: Are you sure you connected the 80 conductor ribbon cables the same way after you changed the power supply?
Did you set the bios to boot the SCSI device FIRST? SCSI - A - C?
Are you using version 2.3 or higher of the Intel Application Accelerator?
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 9/1/2005, 7:10 AM
Hey - I'd say, if nothing else you can always swap the paltters w/ another drive so that you can recover the data that way, but since it's all replaceable, I don't know just how much time that would really save you (not the speadiest process in the world :) )

Dave
R0cky wrote on 9/1/2005, 8:32 AM
Try the bios "reset to default" option. This can fix many corruptions in the battery backed up cmos memory that you can't set in the bios options.
Billae wrote on 9/1/2005, 9:12 AM
I had a similar situation and used it as an excuse to buy a new system. With the prices going down and systems getting faster and better it may become a good thing. I always try looking at a positive side. I know how you feel..... I have been there.
Liam_Vegas wrote on 9/1/2005, 10:26 AM
Edin1

First things first! Check the drives in another system, man!

I have tried the drives in other systems. Please read my other replies for further detail (if you want to).

No storms or anything like that ocurred in our locaility (Southern California).

Thanks anyway for the ideas...
Liam_Vegas wrote on 9/1/2005, 10:27 AM
how does your disk management display their status? unformatted?

The drives do not appear in "Disk Management" at all.... they only appear in Device Manager and the drives are listed as unreadable.
Liam_Vegas wrote on 9/1/2005, 10:29 AM
Try the bios "reset to default" option.

Actually (although I did not say this in my first post)... that's exactly what I was "forced" to do upon first re-boot after installing the new ATX power supply.
Liam_Vegas wrote on 9/1/2005, 10:33 AM
PS: Are you sure you connected the 80 conductor ribbon cables the same way after you changed the power supply?

What has the IDE Cable to do with the power supply? I didn;t touch the IDE cables at all... merely the power connectors.

Did you set the bios to boot the SCSI device FIRST? SCSI - A - C?

There is no SCSI device in my PC... it seems to be a feature of the way the Promise controller operates that it reports these drives as "SCSI". These drives are not my "primary" drives. The boot drive and one other is on the "standard" IDE interface. These ones are on the extra "Promise - IDE" interface.

Are you using version 2.3 or higher of the Intel Application Accelerator?

No idea... I'll check... although... what difference would that make? The drives weere working for the past two years.
kentwolf wrote on 9/1/2005, 10:55 AM
>>...the drives are listed as unreadable....

Are they *logical* drives?

It is very possible to accidentally format these as such. Then, they will often be "unreadable" in some systems.

If they are logical drives, there is an option in Windows XP to ververt the logical drives to "regular" (I forget the word) drives.

Also, if the drives are over a certain GB (again, I forget the size), unless you are updated to at least WinXP SP1, the OS will not see the drives.
Liam_Vegas wrote on 9/1/2005, 11:04 AM
Are they *logical* drives?

No... This is in Device manager - this lists physical devices not logical drives.

It is very possible to accidentally format these as such. Then, they will often be "unreadable" in some systems.

No way that I could have accidentally formatted these drives. I really don't do that sort of thing.

Also, if the drives are over a certain GB (again, I forget the size), unless you are updated to at least WinXP SP1, the OS will not see the drives.

Drives were functioning for the past two years... can't see how what you are suggesting could be a part of the problem.

Thanks for the ideas.
Tom Pauncz wrote on 9/1/2005, 1:00 PM
Liam,
This may not have any bearing on your problem, but here it is anyway:

Some years ago now I had a very similar issue. My computer is up typically 24x7 through a UPS. One time, I was on an extended o/seas trip and the house lost power beyond the time the UPS would keep things going. When I returned home and tried to boot up, a SCSI drive would not spin up.

It was explained to me then, that keeping computers up 24x7 eventually dissipates much of the drive spindle bearing lubricant and once turned off the drive would require more juice than was being supplied to fully spin it up to speed.

It was suggested that I take the drive out of the cradle, try to figure out which way the drive spins (clockwise or anti-cw) and as I power up, cradle the drive in my palm and give it a couple of twists in the same direction to assist in the spin-up.

After a couple of goes at this the drive did spin up and I was able to back everything.

Long-winded, I know, but perhaps you're seeing a similar issue where the drive is spinning up but not quite enough to be recognized by Windoze. HTH.

Bon chance,
Tom