Mysteriously fried hard drive

[brutus90]

Ok, here is my weird story. I have this HP desktop computer that I had to reload. I backed up the hard drive to another computer, performed the reload, did my updates, etc. I pulled the hard drive and hooked it up to the computer and transfered my data back to the hard drive. Everything was working perfectly. I put the hard drive back into the computer. I verified that it was plugged in right (IDE hard drive - didn't reverse the cable), power was plugged in right, and there was nothing in contact with the circuit board.

I turned the computer on, and in about 1 or 2 minutes I was smelling a burning smell from the computer. The computer failed to boot, saying that it didn't have a bootable drive. I shut it down, pulled the hard drive, and found one of the chips basically burnt a hole into itself. I doublechecked to see if there was anything on the backside that would have touched it, but nothing. I checked the voltages on the 5V and 12V of the power supply, and they appeared to be within spec (5.2V and 11.85V). I've even hooked up another drive to the computer to test, and it tests out perfectly. The power supply has been recently changed, but that was about 9 months ago.

Does anybody have any ideas?

Thank you!!!!

 

[razel]

Sad story and just a case of bad luck. It is 'backup your data day.' Good thing you did so.

Actually I had something similar once, but it was ALL completely my fault. I temporarly plugged into another computer an HDD just to copy stuff, but I didn't mount it or anything. I thought I was smart by just laying it there on the bare chassis since that grounds it. While it copied the HDD slid a bit, the PC shut off, then I smelled burnt electronics. Apparently the bare metal chassis shorted something on the HDD circuit board. Luckily the burnt electronics came from the power supply and not the HDD. I relocated the HDD onto a more solid area on the chasis and even more lucky, it booted up again just fine. A SMART run on HDDs didn't detect anything bad.

Oh well lesson learned... I think.

 

[brutus90]

Yup, I've been down that road before, and I actually mounted it where it was going to stay, as I was done with everything. I'm just wondering if, since it happened once, how can I make sure it won't happen again?

 

[corkyg]

In those temporary location situations, I always use a piece of foam as a bed. I keep it handy in the bottom of the case. As for S.M.A.R.T., it never has worked reliably or consistently.

 

[Morg.]

HP desktop computer

There, hit the nail for you.
HP = bad