Second Harddrive crashed - no IDE devices detected

chamlis

Working on A Dell for a client here. All they said was that they heard a "clicking noise" coming from the computer and then wouldn't boot.

Automatically figured the HD was knackered, and nearly sent him away, but then he revealed there were 2 HDs; a second one added to the computer later. So I told him there was a 50/50 chance of him getting his photos back, so he left it with me.

Here's the thing:
There are 2 optical drives on one IDE cable and 2 HDs on the other IDE cable, both set to cable select. When the busted drive is plugged in to the PC, no other devices are detected, but when it's removed the remaining HD and 2 optical drives are picked up in the BIOS again. The remaining HD happens to be the windows one, so he still has a working PC, but this missing IDE when the knackered drive is plugged in thing has me confused.

When I try and plug the knackered drive into another PC, that won't detect it in the BIOS either.

Anyone any ideas before I just dump it? If there is a way to save it or at least access some files I haven't thought of, I'd appreciate it any info.

Thanks.

Ghost Train

i'd say unless you can get some pc to recognise it, probably not. Have you tried it with different cable and on the master setting etc

Anti

right, on the ide chan with the 2 hdds set the jumper to master on the windows hdd, and slave on the 2nd hdd. Disconnect the optical drives. Also clear the cmos.

Failing that try using another pc to check the hdd.

And if that still dosent work use a external usb hdd caddy to pull the data off it.

And if you are still having no luck go to the hdds makers website and download their diaognostic program and run it from another pc with the borked hdd in it.

BKtje

This is quite common infact when one hdd dies that nothing on the ide bus is picked up. unfortunately i don't have a solution for you as nothing i have ever tried has worked. All the best though and let us know if a solution works.

chamlis

I tried setting them to Master/Slave, but no luck.

I'm waiting on a USB caddy to be freed up (all bloody day :rolleyes: ) so I can't try that yet.

The other computer I tried it in didn't recognise the drive either.

Having spoken to the client we were able to determine that the surviving drive is the important one, so it's not completely critical to get this thing back and working again.

I haven't cleared the CMOS or anything, I wouldn't bother wasting any more time. But thanks guys, I knew I was probably flogging a dead horse from the start anyway :rolleyes:

chamlis

UPDATE:

There were scorch marks on the circuit board under the Damaged Hard Drive. That's what was shorting out the IDE channels.

SOLUTION:

Took another circuit board from an identical HD and put it on the damaged one. Worked like a charm!
That's using the old noodle