Three external Hard disks Killed by ICY BOX

[dick]

Hi craig, thanks for replying the makes are:

1) WesternDigital Caviar wd5000aakb (500 GB);
2) Seagate (40 GB);and
3) Maxtor (300 GB).

I wonder if one of the drives went 'pop' and took out the other drives on the same channel? Maybe it was the Seagate? I've seen that happen so many times when the old drive is connected on the primary as a slave after a system upgrade.
As trying to work out what went wrong is now nothing more than pure speculation it would be a good idea to plan your next move.

You are considering to buy in a board for the Maxtor and thats ok but it might be easier to source a doner for the Seagate.

If you post a drive list with model numbers and other details somebody might be able to offer some help on checking the pre amps with a meter.

You need a lot of luck and determination if you are going to get anything back by yourself.

[joetrib]

BlackST I understand what you are saying, but I don't have the option of going to a pro, infact the first thing I did was to phone a pro company here in the uk and the quote to retrieve that data was astronomical, in US dollars 2000 - 4000 for 1TB.

I'm 17; don't have a job; and i go to college.

Also the only reason I came to this forum was to be able to do it myself. If I took your advice of seeing a pro for most things I would no nothing about PC's. It's because I went to forums like these and solved my own problems that I now know how to build my own PC repair my own hardware and sort out my own software problems.

BlackST I never claimed my Hard drive contained invaluable info, that I can't live without. All I said was I would like it back but a professioanl's services are not feasible - which is why I looked for help on the internet to do it on an amatuer basis and in the process hoping to learn someting new. Even if these Hard drives become unrecoverable in the process, it don't matter I won't loose any sleep - at least I can then advice someone else in the same prediciment better.


By the way The ICY Box had an IDE interface heres a pic of it

http://www.trustedreviews.com/periphera ... closure/p1

[joetrib]

dick thanks for replying, But only one drive was connected at a time as it's an external enclosure and I have to remove the first drive to put in the next, and unfortunately I killed the drives one after the other trying to figure out what was wrong.

Heres are the details of my drives:

1) WesternDigital Caviar se16 - wd5000aakb - 00uka0 (500 GB);20 june 2007


2) Seagate (40 GB);and Barracuda ST340014A -FIRMWARE 3.10 - CONFIG: DZQ-06 - DATE CODE:04356 - SITE CODE WU


3) Maxtor (300 GB). MaxLine III - MODEL: 7L3OORO - PATA133 - MANUFACTURE DATE: 28 MAR 2006

[rchadwick]

Thanks for a more detailed picture of what your drives were in. It's got a USB to IDE interface, and more importantly, has it's own power supply. If/when this fails, it can very easily take the drive with it. I'd now say this is the most likely scenario. Get a multimeter, and measure the voltage across the power connector of your Icy Box. Measure from one of the black wires to the red wire, and then one of the black wires to the yellow wire. Tell us what you find.

[joetrib]

I'm really kicking myself now, you remember your favourite saying - "If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems start looking like nails" - well guess what I dissmanteled the ICY Box before I came onto this forum to see if any wires or chips were broken. It was lying on my desk in pieces and in an angery fit of rage I threw it away. I threw it so that it couldn't cause any more damage. I did try to go through the bins but I gave up after I came across a rat.

I'm sorry rchadwick, I really appreciate you trying to help me within the existing constraints. Any way there may be light at the end after all; you said that a power failure can take the drive with it, does that mean it's still a PCB problem or has the drive been internally affected. What would the sypmtons be if the power failure was the cause.

I'll restate some of the symptons:

Drives power up perfectly and spins smoothly and constantly as long as the power is connected. The same was the case when ever I connected the drive to the ICY Box, even after it may have damaged it.

Windows XP, Vista and Bios don't recognise the existence of these three drives, they don't even realise I've connected them - nothing shows up.

Also what would be the sypmtons of a power failure in the case itself, because the ICY Box itself continued to power up fine and probably still would if I could retrieve it, it's surrounding lights also all worked and it gave power to the drives as well.

[rchadwick]

It could be the PCB, or the PCB and the heads. It could be something as simple as a TVS. If you are comfortable with a multimeter and a soldering iron, search for TVS on here for all the details. If not, a PCB swap is likely your best self-help bet. To state the obvious, there's no guarantee, or even good odds, and a shorted preamp can damage the donor board you use, effectively damaging another drive. The best I can offer you under the circumstances is a PCB swap.

[dick]

but then I connected them to another PC internally via an 'IDE 2 Port PCI Controller Card' again nothing was recognised by windows or in the bios settings but on the bios startup screen of the ide's pci controoler card details it showed the name and capacity of the drive

Was that for one drive or for all of them?
I think you need to calm down a little and go over whats happened up to now. If you get stressed you are going to make bad decisions.

I would try to recreate the setup you made above and use MHDD to evaluate the drives, to see if any can be seen by that controller. Sometimes strange things can happen and it would be a very good idea to see if a software recovery is still possible.

[craig6928]

hello joetrib it sounds to me that you got a ripple effect on your power supply
basically this means that the power is no stable and is more likely inputing more
power into the drives then it should

i would stop using it now

you could take a gamble and purchase a matching boards
its possible that you might get away with just a fried board

[joetrib]

Hi,

Thanks everyone I've managed to get all three drives working again.

Dick I follwed your advice and gave the PCI IDE Controller another go. Intially nothing worked. I then connected the drives to the PC's IDE INTERFACE directly instead of via the PCI IDE Controller - this time things got worse Windows would not load at all with the drives connected. All I saw was a blank screen with a dash flashing in the top left of the screen. I also played around with the jumper settings and still nothing worked. But the Bios did show the drive as connected and the correct information.

I then went back to the PCI IDE Controller and I ran Seagate Tools and Mhdd, which I couldn't run when the drives were directly connected to the PC. All the scans were saying everything works, I then had to change the jumper to master from cable select to use Mhdd, and according to Mhdd it could not find any problems - but then when I loaded windows the drive came up.
The I tried the other drive which already had its jumper settings on cable select but in never worked I then changed the settings to master and it worked.

What I realised was that I could not use the jumper settings that I had when the ICY BOX ruined the drives - i had to change them all.

But whatever I do I cannot connect the drives directly to the PC, which I always did before, as it simply won't load windows.

Anyway I am glad I can Access my stuff now. And everyone thank you for all your input

[rchadwick]

I'm glad it worked out for you. It's sometimes difficult for us to figure out things remotely. We also have to gauge the skill of the person asking the question. Then, since we usually deal with difficult problems every day, we tend to overlook the simple things, like drive jumpers.

[joetrib]

rchadwick thanks for all your help, the jumpers should have worked in the positions they were in, as I have used those settings hundereds of times before. What I suspect the case is, that somehow the Icy Box has damaged those settings - that is the reason why the hard drives won't let Vista boot up when I connect them directly to the motherboad's IDE; a blank screen is shown instead.

So in conclusion there is still something physically wrong with the PCB, but I've ordered a 1TB hardrive and I will move everything on there asap.

Thanks and God Bless