Fun: Diagnose this hardware problem

[Mize]

FYI this is resolved, but it was one of the more elusive hardware diagnoses as far as common sense so I'm curious how quickly people can nail it down. I'll post the first bit of "observational data" and then follow-up with more later.

Rig:
Q6600, 4GB Mushkin RAM, 320MB 8800GTS, 1x200 GB Maxtor SATA, 1x320GB Seagate SATA (both 7200 rpm), Lite-on DVD+R, no floppy.

MBR is on SATA1 (Maxtor) and points to GRUB (boot manager) on SATA2 (Seagate) where you can boot to XPP (Maxtor) or Ubuntu (Seagate).

This rig was built about 3 months ago. Has been rock solid ever since in Ubuntu, VM-XPP (running the xpp partition under vmware) or direct booting into XPP.

Came home from dinner one night and the machine came up from the screensaver but was unresponsive. Rebooted and it would post and shutdown. Reset the cmos and got into the bios - no temp issues - so I booted but it failed with a "non system disk" error.

Booted ubuntu CD and ran memtest...no errors

disconnected SATA2 and it would boot, try to load grub and fail (it should fail as grub is on SATA2 which is now missing).

Reconnected SATA2 but notice I can't see it in the BIOS!
Changed SATA channels...still no sign of the Seagate... Maxtor shows up fine but is not bootable...

What would you try next?

[brought to you by "Puzzles by Mize Corp."]

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Take out the hdd, shake it a bit, blow in the sata port a bit, look at it a bit, put it back in and pray it will work. I had this kind of problem very often and this solution always worked for me.

 

[seebs]

Hmm. Roughly in order:
* Reseat both ends of SATA2 data cable, and any available ends on SATA2 power cable.
* Connect SATA2 to SATA1 cable, see whether anything shows up in BIOS.
* If I have an SATA enclosure handy, try it in that, too.
* Feel SATA2 disk to make sure it feels like it's spinning up.

 

[Mize]

Thanks for playing! Here's the next bit...

Tried reseating all cables, etc. Decided to see if linux could see it by booting to a LiveCD. Tossed in my Live CD of Ubuntu 7.04...failed to recognize the CD (I did burn it on another computer) so I tried my Suse 10.1...booted and got errors during boot....hmmm...my kubuntu cd, however, would boot into setup (no live boot on that one)...

Next?

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

So no OS setup can see the HDD? get it out, clear the bios with the jumper, boot, shutdown. Put the HDD back in.

Or put the hdd in a other pc as a slave to see if it sees the hdd. Shutdown that pc and put the hdd back in your pc.

This is what I always do with system disk errors, works great for me.

Trying a lowlevel format floppy from the hdd maker to see if it has any errors on it might also work, atleast that should see the disk no matter what.

 

[seebs]

That's the point at which, being sort of a pragmatist, I scrap the box and get one with ECC memory.

 

[Mize]

And now the dramatic conclusion...

The odd behavior of the DVD-RW made me thing "both a dead HD and a busted optical AT THE SAME TIME"? What are the chances of that...the thing is on a filtering UPS!

Then it dawned on my...power...my OCZ has adjustable rails with indicator lights...hauled the cpu away from the wall and the 5v rail is indicating low...no disabling of devices could bring it up but lowering the 12v rail would...could my seagate just be smart enough not to start without enough juice?

Ttake 850 replacement and all's fine.

That's the very first PSU failure I've seen like this...gradual and no damaged parts. Strange.

 

[I.S.T.]

And now the dramatic conclusion...

The odd behavior of the DVD-RW made me thing "both a dead HD and a busted optical AT THE SAME TIME"? What are the chances of that...the thing is on a filtering UPS!

Then it dawned on my...power...my OCZ has adjustable rails with indicator lights...hauled the cpu away from the wall and the 5v rail is indicating low...no disabling of devices could bring it up but lowering the 12v rail would...could my seagate just be smart enough not to start without enough juice?

Ttake 850 replacement and all's fine.

That's the very first PSU failure I've seen like this...gradual and no damaged parts. Strange.

I had something similar happen to me a month ago. It started out gradual, then my dad fried both the video card and the CPU by turning it on despite my telling him he would do that. >.<

He figured the fans on the PSU having a lot of dust on them was the problem... I could tell otherwise.