I've learned my lesson - again! Grrr

[bigken462]

Many years ago after a major computer crash, I said I would never let my guard down again, but I've become lax about backing up my data. I guess with all the power outages with the snow and ice, I must have had a power surge. Despite using a surge protector, I came home to a dead computer today. It's like waking up from a 7 year coma not know who you are, where you've been or how you got there.

I purchased a home computer in 2007 and have not had one second of trouble. Not the first blue screen of death or anything. My life is on this thing, pictures from 2 years in Iraq and traveling, family pictures, tons of documents and every single note I've made with my homebrewing experience - as short as it is. I have 3 batches now that I don't have my data for. I'm hoping I can go back and find threads where I've discussed different aspects of what I was brewing to get my numbers.

If I can manage to salvage two terabites of pictures and data, I will never let my guard down again.

Pissed in Alabama,

 

[Facinerous]

I'm sorry to hear that you lost all your stored information. Unfortunately it does happen.

You can probably take it to a computer shop and see what can be done for data recovery.

Here is a link that could help you out. Popular Mechanics: Hard Drive Data Recovery

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

If it died while turned off, the HDD is probably fine. And if a surge fried the HDD, it probably just fried something on the circuit board. Most data recovery firms can usually get it back by swapping a known-good circuit board from an identical drive.

It's highly unlikely that anything mechanical inside the drive was damaged. And is quite possible the drive itself is fine.

 

[thaworm69]

Makes you wonder about the dependence of our generation's technology. No wonder why all the artifacts are written in stone...its a little more sturdy than a 1/32" pc of plastic..

 

[thaworm69]

Hope you recover from your loss by the way!

 

[bigken462]

I'm sure the insurance agent will want to the computer. I don't mind utilizing my claim service as I have been a Sate Farm customer for about 19 years without a single claim. I don't have a problem with this, so long as I can retain my HD's afterwards.

I am scared though that since there was no other appliances in the house affected, they may decide that it's a computer problem not caused by a power surge. I'm hopeful whichever technician looks at it will be honest with their evaluation. If it's just a typical computer crash, I'll take my loses, but if it's related to a surge, I think it's about time to seek some benefit of paying the premiums.

Either way, I'll do what I can to recover the data. I'm hoping a few computer savvy friends can help save me the cost of paying to recover the files. That much data will be costly.

 

[Facinerous]

Friends don't let friends lose their data.

 

[SeeAliceBrewery]

I am a computer tech by trade....a couple questions for you.

1. you say its dead...describe what dead is for you? Is the power light coming on? What are you seeing on the screen when you hit the power button?

2. If you are not seeing power come on....ie a power light...nor anything on your screen...it is safe to say that your hard drive...and all its data is safe and secure. It is really as simple as removing the hard drive and placing it into another system that can handle whatever operating system you are currently using.

I would be happy to help you out via pm...just let me know.

 

[bigken462]

Dead in it's tracks. Wont boot up, wont even try. There is power to the power supply as shown by a lil green LED behind the case just below where the power cord plugs in. Despite that one light, the computer is dead. No fans turning, no hummmm, no beeps, notta.

I'm in a middle of a stretch of work days so I haven't had time or been able to locate the resources to trouble shoot. I'm operating Windows 7. Don't have the specs in front of me, but I may try to source another tower with a board to support what I have loaded.

I used to be all into the computer stuff when I was younger. Now though, I just pull drunks out of the ditches and mend broken bones. Lol

 

[Homercidal]

Sounds like the Power Supply is toast. They are generally not expensive nor difficult to replace. It might also be the Motherboard, but PSUs have a history of giving up the ghost after a few years.

You could jumper the proper leads on the PSU to see if it will run outside of the computer. IIRC it was shorting the purple wire to ground (PSU HOUSING). If the PSU does not power up with the jumper in place, it's toast.

And I would definitely consider getting an external hard drive connector so you can back up your hard drive on another computer before doing anything else.

 

[LLBeanJ]

I agree with Homer, sounds like your power supply unit fried, which is not that uncommon. Even if the motherboard went out, I'd bet good money that your hard drive is fine and all the data can easily be recovered by you, meaning no IT pro or data recovery specialist required. My guess is that PC can be back up and running with a PSU from ebay for less than $40.

 

[Rhumbline]

I agree that it's a good sign that it isn't doing anything. If it tried to boot up and gave the "No hard drive found" msg then you'd be in much worse shape.

If you are comfortable pulling the hard drive you can do that and bring it into a computer shop and they can easily pull the data off if it's not trashed.

Shouldn't cost much, buy an external drive to dump it onto and then re-install the HD when you replace the power supply.

 

[IslandLizard]

+1 on all the support above and generally good advice! Chances are the drive and/or the data are fine.

You may want to get another (new or working) computer. Then you can use your old hard drive as a "secondary" and save (copy) your data. The key is, keep the drive as is, without writing anything to it. Don't modify what's there.

When mounting such a drive, whatever messages you get, do NOT format or let Windows check or "fix" that drive. Never!

Also, don't take the computer to some repair center (BB or other) with that hard drive in it. Chances are they will reformat or "lose" it.

And you probably knew this, but never got around doing so, always have a backup of the data you care about. Nothing fancy is needed, just copy the files and folders you want to keep to a 2nd computer, an external hard drive, or a cloud server.

Wouldn't hurt to store extra copies off site, and it's easy in this time of age.

Last but not least, I'm wishing you good luck. Keep those fingers crossed!

 

[IslandLizard]

Sounds like the Power Supply is toast. They are generally not expensive nor difficult to replace. It might also be the Motherboard, but PSUs have a history of giving up the ghost after a few years.

You could jumper the proper leads on the PSU to see if it will run outside of the computer. IIRC it was shorting the purple wire to ground (PSU HOUSING). If the PSU does not power up with the jumper in place, it's toast.

And I would definitely consider getting an external hard drive connector so you can back up your hard drive on another computer before doing anything else.

Good advice!

It's the green wire actually.
A paperclip between the green wire and the adjacent black one does the trick.

 

[Homercidal]

Good advice!

It's the green wire actually.
A paperclip between the green wire and the adjacent black one does the trick.

I can never remember!

And yes, I agree. NEVER format or do any write processes on it. And PLEASE don't trust any big chain service place to not overwrite your drive! I've heard of friends taking their computers to GeekSquad, Dell, etc. and they tell them DO NOT DO ANY WORK UNTIL YOU TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG, and the STILL end up having their system's restored to factory image and being charged $100 to "fix" it.

There is a very good chance the drive and all data is safe. The best thing to do would be to pull the drive and use a USB adapter to connect it to another computer to back it up. Preferably one with a similar Operating System. Once you copy the data, you can be more relaxed about repairing the problem.

Power Supplies can run anywhere from $40 to $80 on up, depending on the brand and style. And I HIGHLY recommend one that has a proven high quality. Good, clean source of sufficient current is important to a device like a computer.

Tom's Hardware usually has a very good listing of PSU reviews. They treat them very badly to find out which ones are best, and which ones (MANY of them!) are WAY overrated and burn up before they even reach min specs.

 

[Homercidal]

Heh! I'm more like MacGruber than McGuyver.

 

[B2Barleywine]

+1 on power supply. I've had several of these burnout on me in the past. A quality one will last.

 

[SeeAliceBrewery]

Reading your reply....I see my initial questions were right on the money. For future note....I HIGHLY suggest an external hard drive that you back up to on a regular basis. When you are not using this external hard drive....unplug it from the wall and the computer...should you get a power surge in the future...your data will be safe!

 

[pumpkinman2012]

You can buy an external hard drive enclosure for under $20.00 on New Egg, insert the hard drive into the unit and plug it into another computer via usb and transfer all of your pics and data.

 

[bigken462]

Well I jumped the two wires in the harness where it connects to the MB,
and the fan inside the power supply fired up. Im assuming this leaves the board to be fried?

Sent from my DROIDX using Home Brew mobile app

 

[SeeAliceBrewery]

More than likely yes....the surge could have also taken out your hard drive. I would remove it before you try anything else just to be safe.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Well I jumped the two wires in the harness where it connects to the MB,
and the fan inside the power supply fired up. Im assuming this leaves the board to be fried?

Sent from my DROIDX using Home Brew mobile app

The green wire, IIRC, is "PS_ON#" which is an output of the motherboard to tell the power supply to turn on. That's driven on the motherboard by a circuit connected to a standby (5V usually) courage that's always on. If the surge hit the 5VSB circuitry primarily, it probably killed that circuit on the motherboard, but that circuit is typically isolated from the rest of the 5V power...

However, the HDD isn't driven off 5VSB, it's driven off 5V (and 12V, if it's a 3.5" drive like in most desktops). Assuming the PC was off, a surge is unlikely to have hit either.

I think the HDD will prove to be fine.

 

[bigken462]

I wish I could have had more time to follow up with my last post. 30 minutes before I was to leave for work I get a hair up my butt to try to trouble shoot this one last time. I pulled the cover off and unplugged the wires to the hard drive and slid them out the front. I did notice how loose they were. Seemed odd that they did not have a plastic latch. I'll come back to this.

I jumped tested a few of the spare plugs with a ohms meter. No power. I then used a paper clip to jump the green and black wire and sure enough the fan inside the power drive fired up. Being hopeful, I reassembled everything and plugged the computer up and pressed the power button and nothing. I jiggled a few more wires and nothing. Pulled the hard drive back out, unplugged the harness again from the MB and while using the paperclip as a jumper tested a few empty plugs and it showed I had 10 volts on several of them.

I plugged everything else up again and tried to power up and nothing. Getting pissed and discouraged I did what would cause any computer technician to cringe. I slapped the **** out of it, banged on the sides hard enough to be charged with domestic violence and pressed the power button once more. I'll be dang if the thing didn't start to boot up.

Really pushing myself now to have enough time to shower and leave for work, I carried it into the computer room and plugged everything in and pressed the power button. It started to boot. I was breathing a sigh of relief with all of the sudden the screen message appears that no bootable (sp) drive found and to insert operations disk. (or something to that effect).

My heart sank as this was every sign that the drive had failed. Recalling how loose the data and power cable attachment was, I unplugged these and tried to reset them again. Seems like I tried once or twice more when all of the sudden the thing booted up.

When I left the house, it was working fine. I'll not spare a extra minute when my tax refund arrives backing this computer up to a hard drive - again. (the other two failed years ago).

So I dunno, could be the connection to the hard drive, or there still could be a loose connection somewhere else just waiting on the opportunity to fail again. Either way, I'll chalk it up as luck and not fuss.

I appreciate the advice on how to trouble shoot the power supply. Probably saved me some cash on having to carry it to a computer shop which was what my insurance agent was asking me to do.

Would a interruption of power be any cause to any of this? Been using puters since the Tandy 1000 came out and never had a problem rebooting after the power went out.

 

[Rhumbline]

Don't trust the thing. Pick up some cheap USB thumb drives and copy your data over right away.

Don't wait.

 

[Homercidal]

Don't trust the thing. Pick up some cheap USB thumb drives and copy your data over right away.

Don't wait.

Yes. Drives are cheap compared to the cost of a new computer. Loose wires happen all the time. I'd buy a new 1TB drive and a portable enclosure and Image your current drive to that new one and use it as the new Boot drive. Then put the old drive in the enclosure and use it as a backup.

Sometimes odd current can cause a weird malfunction in the board that causes it to not boot, or a drive to not be recognized until the PSU is disconnected and the power drained from the board. It's rare, but I've seen it a few times.

I'd check ALL of the connections from the front panel switches to the MOBO. You can test the switches by jumping the jumpers on the mobo where the wires from the panel plug in. The PW/ON switch is a momentary switch. Just use a small screwdriver to connect the two header pins and it should fire up.

If not, then there is likely something odd going on in the MOBO.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Getting pissed and discouraged I did what would cause any computer technician to cringe. I slapped the **** out of it, banged on the sides hard enough to be charged with domestic violence and pressed the power button once more.

As someone working for an HDD maker, I can tell you the this does NOT improve the situation. I cringed just reading this.

 

[Newsman]

You can buy an external hard drive enclosure for under $20.00 on New Egg, insert the hard drive into the unit and plug it into another computer via usb and transfer all of your pics and data.

For reasons that I won't go into much detail (for fear of a lawsuit) I will no longer buy from NewEgg. Suffice it to say I had to fight tooth and nail to get a refund on a hard drive that failed about two weeks after I got it.

 

[IslandLizard]

For reasons that I won't go into much detail (for fear of a lawsuit) I will no longer buy from NewEgg. Suffice it to say I had to fight tooth and nail to get a refund on a hard drive that failed about two weeks after I got it.

I'm a happy NewEgg customer and never had a bad experience with them. Only one time I had to return a non-working/non-compatible item and they sent me a pre-paid RMA label. No cost to me.

I guess everyone's mileage varies.

When I encounter an unwilling support droid, I hang up and call again.

 

[bigken462]

As someone working for an HDD maker, I can tell you the this does NOT improve the situation. I cringed just reading this.

It may not have, but it had better attitude about not coming on next time. :cross:

 

[Homercidal]

For reasons that I won't go into much detail (for fear of a lawsuit) I will no longer buy from NewEgg. Suffice it to say I had to fight tooth and nail to get a refund on a hard drive that failed about two weeks after I got it.

I have bought from Newegg for many years and never had a problem with them. I've had to return motherboards, hard drives, power supplies, etc. always have been very good about returns.

And, with hard drives, the manufacturer usually has excellent return policies for the first few years. They might make you run some diagnostics before returning though.