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This 30 GB Western Digital retail drive was working fine until the PC it was in just died (wouldn't turn on). AFter several motherboards, it was discovered that the video card apparently destroyed the motherboard, and two later ones. Eventually, the kind RMA people at Frys showed me that the k7s5a motherboard I had returned worked fine with another video card. I had long-ago taken out the WD hard drive and was just trying to get the friggin thing to beep and give me a POST screen.

When I reconnected the original hard drive, which had been sitting metal down on a desk, the mobo's HD light just stayed on solid, it paused a long time, and said there was no drive hooked up. Same thing on secondary controller. Another hard drive was detected fine.

Is there any possibility that this drive is salvageable? Is it possible that the reason this PC died in the first place is from a virus that attacked the HD and video card firmware? It seems awfully strange that the HD died the same time as a video card and a motherboard. Its 1.5 years old, so I suppose WD will send me another one.

Perhaps a more reasonable explanation is a power surge destroyed everything.

did you check the drive with WD's lifeguard tools to see if it is functional? That will tell you if it is hosed or not.

Sounds like a long shot (Lifeguard Tools), since the BIOS doesn't even detect this drive, Lifeguard may not be able to access it. But I'll find that floppy and give it a try! Thanks.

Well, if you can not get it to work, there is always the RMA.

This may sound foolish but make sure the jumpers on the HD are setup correctly. Western Digital Drives have four (4) possible jumper settings, master only, master with slave, slave, or cable select. Failure to have the correct jumper set on a WD will normally cause the drive to be completly undetected.

FWIW, I get the best results with the "Cable Select" setting with the WD1200JB. The BIOS does its auto-detect thing and moves on in almost no time compared to the delay if the drive is set to master without a slave present.

okay... drive light comes on, so its getting power.

is Pin 0 on the cable (the one painted red if you're using normal IDE cables) on the correct side?

WDs usualy have four jumper configurations. they're quite picky. is it set correctly? Master and Master with Slave are more fickle than one would imagine.

if all else fails, maybe its hosed.

(sorry for delay - I started this thread from work & then went on vacation)

For sure, the cable is not backwards -- stripe towards power connector. The other end must be right because another drive is detected properly by BIOS. I now believe the drive, and everything in this computer was hosed by a power surge -- the motherboard, possibly the CPU, power supply, video card and HD are all bad. I'll RMA it to Western Digital. Its my son's computer and the disk contained mostly his online music collection, which can be replaced over time.

Petz wrote:

(sorry for delay - I started this thread from work & then went on vacation)

For sure, the cable is not backwards -- stripe towards power connector. The other end must be right because another drive is detected properly by BIOS. I now believe the drive, and everything in this computer was hosed by a power surge -- the motherboard, possibly the CPU, power supply, video card and HD are all bad. I'll RMA it to Western Digital. Its my son's computer and the disk contained mostly his online music collection, which can be replaced over time.

That's not cool. You shouldn't RMA it since it's your fault for not protecting the system with a surge suppressor.