HD failure or motherboard?

[CMC79]

I need some help--wondering if anyone knows if this is a HD issue or a motherboard problem.

I was playing Civ 4, ended a turn, and while autosaving my computer locked up and a terrible screeching sound came out of my speakers. I had to kill the power switch to get to stop. Waited a little bit, restarted the PC and my main SATA drive isn't detected. PATA drives are still picked up but I can't get the BIOS to recognize the drive. So I think my HD died...bought a new SATA drive, put it in, and it still won't detect. I've tried different cables, all 4 SATA ports, and two different drives. Does anyone know exactly what happened here? Did I kill my motherboard, my hard drive, or both? It seems unlikely but not impossible that I got a DOA drive but I'd love to think my original drive survived.

The system at the time:
Athlon 3200 @2600mhz
DFI NF4 Ultra-D
2x512mb Corsair Value RAM on a divider (it's been so long I don't even remember some settings)
250gb SATA WD HD, 16mb cache (the one that failed; the new drive I tried is 500gb)
100GB PATA WD HD
ATI x1900xt 256mb
Pioneer DVDRW
Antec Smartpower 500W.

 

[Slugbait]

Your hard drive is probably perfectly fine. The SATA chipset may have gone fubar...but check the SATA settings in the BIOS and verify it's configured properly. For example, it may have "switched" itself to Raid when you aren't using Raid.

Another thing to check is the SATA drivers...they may have been located in a cluster that suddenly went bad. A re-install of the drivers may clear this all up easily.

 

[CMC79]

I reset the BIOS back to defaults, and I still didn't get anything. I thought the SATA function was part of the NF4 chipset--can it be that only that part failed and I still have everything else function?

 

[Growly]

Originally posted by: CMC79
I reset the BIOS back to defaults, and I still didn't get anything. I thought the SATA function was part of the NF4 chipset--can it be that only that part failed and I still have everything else function?

Aren't the SATA ports on the Ultra-D provided by the nVidia NF4 chip?

 

[CMC79]

Well, the mystery, to an extent, has been solved. I finally got my HD to another computer and sure enough it's fine. I've already put money into a new replacement HD that I really don't need now, but I think I'll keep it. It'll be interesting to actually have more than 1 terabyte of storage--my first HD was 210mb!

 

[Jiggz]

Part of the mobo died or shorted. Dismount the mobo and try it outside the case with only the SATA hdd connected (of course with all the basics like video, ram, cpu + HSf and PSU). Then boot and see if the hdd is detected in the bios.