Hi Last week I did some cable management in my computer. When I plugged the cables back in and turned the computer back on, a spark and some smoke came from the 8 pin connector on the motherboard ....Yes F*CK was pretty much my first thought (all cables was connected in the right way).. After some testing (which also involved tearing my brothers computer apart) I figured the motherboard had suffered and needed to be replaced.. Yesterday I got the new motherboard . I assembled my rig and discovered that the computer could not find my HDDs (I got three of them, all SATAII).. Since it can find my DVD drive, I can tell that it is not the SATA controller on the motherboard that is faulty.. allso I have tested all three HDDs in another computer and none of the drives works.. they do not even start spinning, although the PCB on the back of the drives gets hot.. My Question is, if the PSU could have killed both my (old) motherboard and all three harddisks? And can I save the harddisks? Thanks EDIT: the PSU is a Corsair VX550W and is just about 2 years old
Yes the PSU can kill everything. I'm surprised you didn't get a new PSU when you got the mobo, what are you going to do when it blows up the new mobo and HDDs?? You might be able to get the data off the HDDs, but it would be expensive.
well yeah.. I really didn't consider the PSU to be the problem, but rather the mobo.. I had some problem with it before.. The HDDs was killed before i tested it with the new mobo.. because i only connected 2 of the 3, and the third was also dead.. Luckily the warranty still holds on the PSU.. EDIT: yes, I am sure everything was connected correctly.. I always double check on that part..
Like Cerberus90 said, yes the psu can kill everything. As to saving the hard drives, without having it in front of me, I would say buy the same model, and swap the controller board between the good/bad. If that doesn't work, make a clean room box, and swap the platters. However, chances of swapping platters, and still having them work is not in your favor.
Swapping over the boards is a relatively easy fix to get the data off, but if you've fried the motor then that's not going to get you anywhere. Swapping the platters would, but it won't work, plain and simple. Maybe 10 years ago, but these days its a sure fire way to kill a hard drive.
