In all my years working with pc's, I've never seen this beofre

[JeepinEd]

This is kind of long, but here goes:

I have an older 3GhZ Pentium D w/ Intel GSA?? board, 2gigs of RAM, x1800xt video, Seasonic 560Watt PSU, 1 Seagate 500 gig e-Sata, 1 500 Gig internal Sata (C Drive), 1 320 Gig WD Sata and 1 120Gig WD IDE drive. Running XP SP2.

Last week, I turned on the PC and as soon as it got to the Windows logo, it rebooted. Tried it again, and same thing. It just kept rebooting. I figured my PSU was bad, so I connected a new Antec 560W PSU. The problem was still there. I then replaced the Video card with an 8600GTS card, but no luck.
I ended up putting together a whole new system. The only thing I reused were the Hard Drives. When I tried to run the Windows Recovery program, It showed the drive as not being formatted. I tried just letting it boot, and it started rebooting again, as soon as it got past the POST screen. This was a fairly new drive, that I mirrored from another drive. Figuring the drive was bas, I tried connecting the old drive, which I had in a drawer. When I let it boot, the PC started rebooting again, just after the POST screen.
Since this was an old drive, I tried installing a fresh copy of XP on it and it worked just fine.
Once I got XP installed w/ all the updates, I plugged in the other internal drives. They were all recognized by XP, but only the IDE drive was usable. The other two SATA drives came up as unformatted.
I use my e-Sata drive to back up all my data. This drive is only on while backing up (Last backup about 2 weeks ago). I plugged this drive in, and it showed up as unformatted in XP.

My plan is to purchase a good data recovery program to try to retrieve all my files. Can anyone recommend a good program and does anyone have an idea as to what happened?

Thanks,

Ed

 

[redbone75]

Had this happen to me before. Make sure it's not your USB ports going bad. Disable USB in the bios and see if it posts.

 

[QueBert]

GetDataBack

a friend bought this last week, re managed to recover all his files, YMMV but this is supposed to be one of the better recovery programs, and it a whole lot cheaper than some of the others out there. We bought the NTFS version, downloaded the BartPE plugin, created him a BartPE boot cd, booted and recovered 400 gigs of files. The initial scan took about 3 hours if I remember correctly, then the actual data recovery took about 6 hours. We were going from internal to an external USB HD. Not sure if internal -> internal would be faster.

All I know is he was thrilled with the results, and the 70 bucks he spent was worth it.

 

[JeepinEd]

Thanks for the info., QueBert, I'll check it out.

These disks contain all the pictures and videos of my son. The fact that even my external backup drive went bad is unsettling. Once I recover the data, I'll be burning a bunch of DVD's.

Redbone,
Bad USB ports would not cause SATA drives to go bad, would they?
Even if the USB ports were bad on the original PC, the new PC exhibited the same problem. The only two things carried over were the Hard Drives and DVD recorder.

Ed

 

[robisbell]

hmm, will need more detailed info on the mobo exact model and bios revision, hdd make and models.

 

[JeepinEd]

Originally posted by: robisbell
hmm, will need more detailed info on the mobo exact model and bios revision, hdd make and models.

The Board is an Intel LGA775 -915GAG. Bios Version 482.
The main HDD is: |ST 7K 32M SATA2 ST3500320AS

I've built a whole new system and will be trying to recover my data over the weekend. I am, however, very curious as to what might have happened. The spare drive that I had, was fully functional with the operating system, and yet it caused the same reboot problem when I plugged it in to both the old an new systems. My only thought is that when I plugged it into the old system, it ruined the partitions on the drive.

One thing that comes to mind is that my video card (X1800XT) would casue the display to sometimes go blank when I first booted the computer. I would have to hit the reset button and let it reboot for it to work. The day my system went bad, the PC booted into windows, and as it would sometimes do, the screen went white. I hit the reset switch and that's when it all went to hell.

 

[robisbell]

I asked for all HDD make and model numbers, thanks.

 

[JeepinEd]

Originally posted by: robisbell
I asked for all HDD make and model numbers, thanks.

Unfortunately, I'm not at home right now, so I provided you with the info. I have on hand.
I'll check the other drives when I get home tonight.

 

[AnimeKnight]

I recently encountered a similar problem. The computer was stuck on rebooting cycle. After about a week of trouble shooting creating different images and methods. It turned out it's the motherboard.

anyways as to a good recovery program. I like finaldata, I was able to recover my pictures and other files from a separate incident.