COMPUTER ASPLODE (advice for aspiring computer technicians)

[Bobmuhthol]

When connecting a power supply to a hard drive, make sure your computer has no electrical current running through it. If you fail to do this, you will effectively destroy the hard drive, motherboard, and anything connected to the motherboard, including the power supply.

Thank you.

[AnticorRifling]

No you won't. As a good rule of thumb you should remove power before working on any electronic device to prevent injury to the gear and yourself but I have yet to hose any piece of computer gear because I failed to remove power. Hell I swapped the HDDs on 20 desktops in the last two days alone and all are good to go.

[Bobmuhthol]

I mean, the computer was on.

[Apotheosis]

umm, you should know better then that.

still, can't see that really burning out the computer unless you find a way to short it good.

[AnticorRifling]

Originally posted by Bobmuhthol
I mean, the computer was on.

HAHAHA that should get you an instant A+ cert.

That's kind of like trying to change out the transmission of a car while the engine is still on.

[Bobmuhthol]

I knew it happens, but I forgot it was on.

It definitely blows the computer. It doesn't start anymore (power supply definitely gets fucked), and I'm confident that the motherboard is dead, as well as the hard drive.

[AnticorRifling]

He probably forced a cable in upside down and it tried to ground itself to itself. I've done that with a tape drive....(though the computer was off and it fried when I turned it on)

[Bobmuhthol]

<<He probably forced a cable in upside down and it tried to ground itself to itself.>>

Nah, I connected the power supply to the drive correctly.

You just aren't supposed to do it.

[Skirmisher]

Wow, sorry to hear that Bob, i'll be sure to never do that though.:O

[Showal]

I did something like that on a really old computer once. The computer just wouldnt start. Tried it the next day and it ran like nothing happened.

[Wezas]

And I was just about to buy that computer....

[Gan]

Not to hijack Bob's thread... but I have an aspiring technician question and want to keep from nuking my computer.

I have an extra hard drive I'd like to slave to my current system.
What steps do I need to take other than connecting the drive to an extra power cable and an empty slot in my data ribbon?

I think I config the extra HDD by moving the swith to slave on the drive itself.

Do I also alter something in the bios menu that you can access as the computer is starting?

Once the drive is recognized by my system I intend to re-format and remove the old OS and old data and use it as a dumping ground for all of my digital photos (no its not p0rN....).

Any help would be appreciated.

[Edited on 6-22-2005 by Ganalon]

[Bobmuhthol]

<<And I was just about to buy that computer....>>

The computer I'm selling is still functional, and is what I have been and still am using.

[Bobmuhthol]

To install it, you'd basically connect the slave IDE cable, connect it to the power supply, edit BIOS for auto-detection of slave hard drives, and restart the computer.

Someone else has much more detailed instructions, I'm sure.

[AnticorRifling]

Put the jumper to cable select. Place it on the middle of the ribbon cable, primary drive on the end of the ribbon cable. Turn on your computer. If you're using win2k or XP just right click my computer, manage, disk management and then you can wipe it as you'd like. Or if you're familiar with DOS just boot into DOS and format/partition (partition magic is good if you need a gui or you can use fdisk).

[Gan]

Outstanding! Thx.

I think I was missing the placement of the drive on the IDE cable. I think I had it on the end slot and that was throwing me a kink.

So I can use either cable right? My primary HD is on one cable, and my accessory drives (CDRW, floppy) is on the other IDE cable.

[AnticorRifling]

Your FDD is on it's own cable, the CDRW will be on the secondary IDE cable. Yes you can put it on the same cable as the CDRW or HDD doesn't matter.

[Fengus]

Unless you put the cable in wrong, or bumped something and shorted a connection I don't think you've damaged anything. Did you see or smell any smoke or burning?

Anyway, it could be a CMOS protective shutdown, say plugging that in live upped the current momentarily (and maybe you already have a high current due to electrical supply anomalies) and this caused the CMOS to shutdown. Try disconnecting everything and reconnecting (First remove the power cord!) then reconnect the power and see if it boots up. Typically your motherboard will have some sort of error recovery like beeps or whatnot so if it beeps when you restart you might have to find out what that means.
Also you might try to reset your CMOS, this is usually done by shorting a jumper that exists for this purpose, however you can also remove the battery from your motherboard (prolly looks like a watch battery) and then let the computer sit for a minute or so then put the battery back in and then try to start it again.

For safety and protection of your equipment I would always remove power in the future.

[theotherjohn]

Originally posted by Bobmuhthol
I mean, the computer was on.

when you remove a drive when the computer is on is called a hot swap


I do it all the time

I think its different for laptops with removable drives though TOJ.

[Back]

Sounds like a dumbass problem to me.

I mean, every instruction you get from China states very clearly...

Make sure computer unplugged.

[theotherjohn]

Originally posted by Dave
I think its different for laptops with removable drives though TOJ.


I am not talking about a laptop

you're talking about internal hard drives or removeable ones?

[Bobmuhthol]

<<when you remove a drive when the computer is on is called a hot swap>>

I didn't remove a drive. I plugged one in.

The result is always going to be the same, anyone that claims to be able to give power to a hard drive while the PC is running is the biggest liar ever.

[theotherjohn]

Originally posted by Bobmuhthol
<<when you remove a drive when the computer is on is called a hot swap>>

I didn't remove a drive. I plugged one in.

The result is always going to be the same, anyone that claims to be able to give power to a hard drive while the PC is running is the biggest liar ever.

I guess ABS and I are the biggest liars ever. The info is not the one I use at home to build my RAID but I didnt want to spend much time proving my point

here is the link to a product.

http://abs.com/ipc/conquest.asp


here is the info:

Hot-swap Hard Drive Bays

Hot-swap hard drive refers to a system designed so that the SATA / SCSI disk drives can be pulled from the rack without cutting the power to the CPU or any other of the drives, typically used in RAID subsystems or JBOD (just a bunch of disks) environments.The ability to "Hot Swap" a disk drive is beneficial to customers. It allows them to remove potentially defective drives from the system, or upgrade capacity without having the inconvenience and expense of taking the entire system down to replace the drive.



again child you know many things but not all

[Bobmuhthol]

HI, WHAT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND ABOUT ADDING POWER TO A DRIVE, NOT REMOVING IT? WHAT THE FUCK HOW COULD ONE PERSON BE SO ILLITERATE?

[Lomoriond]

We ran on hotswappable for awhile at my old work, but the people got careless and didn't go through the correct process. We had the cheapy kind where you had to shut off the bay and wait for the computer recognize that the power on it has been disconnected and flash a warning message, then swap and power the bay back on (switch on the front)

The hardware ops techs either got 20 calls a day saying they keep getting error messages when switching drives, or being unable to access their drives (cause they ripped one drive out and shoved another in without waiting for the computer to recognize it, and fried it)

So we made the rule you had to power down completely before swapping.

Now the technology has probably worn in a little better by now (it was KIND new n in when we started using it) so the built in power protector to keep the drive from frying has obviously evolved... but my experiences with it are bad.

And staying in with the advice for aspiring computer techs, if you reach in to stop a moving CPU fan with your finger to test how fast its running, your boss WILL shoot you (one guy fried THREE machines before we figured out thats what he was doing)

[Fengus]

Why does it matter how fast the fan is going? Also how would that fry a machine?

Anyway sounds like you have lots of idoits on staff, why not get securable cases and secure them.

[Lomoriond]

It wasn't the speed of the fan that was the problem, it was reaching your hand into a running computer while not grounded/unpowered and static zapping the whole board.

Yeah.. usually the graphics artists were the morons on staff who would do stupid shit like that, could do awesome work with a GUI but give em a motherboard and they'll find nine ways to roast it.

Though the one who was zapping his CPU over and over was actually just an analyst with no common sense.

And they wondered why I quit...