DEAD HDD?? Troubleshooting Help

[Beerce]

Hi all,

To start, I know there are thousands of resources and articles online which give instruction and troubleshooting pointers for recovering data from a drive that won't boot. This is not what I'm looking for here - I'm just looking to answer a few questions about my specific situation:

I was merrily using my HTPC last night with not problems. I shut it down when I went to bed and this morning it will not boot. BIOS will not detect the HDD and when I put it in other computers it is still not detected. The odd part to me is that when I put it into my gaming rig which has several working HDDs, it still won't boot and it won't detect ANY of the HDDs plugged in, including the working ones. If I unplug the bad one, no problems, all are detected and away we go.
I've also run Windows 7 recovery console, but it won't detect the hard drive either - so I can't run a fixmbr or anything like that.
All of the above has led me to believe that the hard drive has suffered a mechanical failure (my guess is it's not getting power), so I will ultimately end up buying a new drive for the HTPC and going through the hassle of a clean installation.

So mainly for my understanding, my question is: Can one bad HDD cause other good HDDs to not be detected and fail to boot? I lack the knowledge to understand how one defective drive can affect the BIOS detection of all of the other good ones.

Thanks,
Beerce

 

[corkyg]

Can one bad HDD cause other good HDDs to not be detected and fail to boot?
Not really. I would look to a BIOS problem on the motherboard - or evn the power supply. It needs to be something that affects all drives equally.

If you can remove one of the drives, install it in an external powered case and then connect it to another bootable computer, you can tell right away if it is the drive. My sense it is not. My inclination is the power supply rails that feed those drives.

 

[KingFatty]

Is the bad drive shorting out the SATA interface in a way that affects the SATA controller connected to the other drives?

Is the bad drive shorting out the power interface from the PSU, potentially causing the PSU to cut power to anything else on that rail possibly including other drives?

Maybe a sliver of metal fell onto the drive connection somehow, causing a simple shorting of two pins together that shouldn't be shorted together. Look it over carefully, maybe try another cable, etc. Also, maybe something got knocked loose from the circuit board of the drive.

 

[Beerce]

Hey thanks for the suggestions guys.

corkyg, I don't think it's the mobo or PSU since it doesn't work in either of two separate systems. Also, I don't think it's something affecting all drives equally since it's only one drive that is causing problems. It is the common denominator - the others work on all sata ports in any configuration as long as the "culprit" drive is not plugged in. Lastly, I don't have an external powered case to test that unfortunately.

KingFatty, some of these suggestions could be possible but sound very hard to isolate. Its not the cable since it fails in more than one PC and therefore more than one cable. Also, all of the connections on the HDD side are very clean and in perfect condition so I have a hard time seeing why it could be shorting anything.
Your first sentence is the only thing that I could see being the problem - the bad drive somehow affecting the SATA controller...
To test this I will have to try hooking the bad drive up to 1 controller and the good drives on another and see if any are detected.

Thanks, and I appreciate any more suggestions. Any other things I can try for troubleshooting to see if it's a bad drive or not?

Beerce

 

[ummduh]

Put the "bad" drive in an external USB style enclosure and see if it mounts.