Kind of urgent tech problem... help?

[BordomBeThyName]

OK, I removed the drive from the case (it's a maxtor external, but the drive was a seagate, weird?) and put it in my friends desktop. After some experimenting, we found that if the molex connector was plugged in at all, the computer wouldn't turn on at all, but if just the data was plugged in, the system was fine.

HDD specs if anyone wants them:
Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 500GB IDE

[MrForbes]

hmmmm....not good! The molex connector is the power. I dont think I've ever encountered a bad hard drive that would keep the psu from turning on when the power connector was plugged into it!

[EHaskins]

Originally Posted by BordomBeThyName

OK, I removed the drive from the case (it's a maxtor external, but the drive was a seagate, weird?) and put it in my friends desktop. After some experimenting, we found that if the molex connector was plugged in at all, the computer wouldn't turn on at all, but if just the data was plugged in, the system was fine.

HDD specs if anyone wants them:
Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm 500GB IDE

I think Seagate and Maxtor are owned by the same people now, so that isn't surprising.

When you say "wouldn't turn on at all" so you mean no lights, no fans, ect., or do you mean sits at the POST screen?

If its the first option I've never heard of anything like that. If its the second, its likely that the jumpers on the drive are mis-configured for the machine you installed the drive in, or there are settings in that machine's BIOS which are incompatible with that drive.

[BordomBeThyName]

Originally Posted by EHaskins

I think Seagate and Maxtor are owned by the same people now, so that isn't surprising.

When you say "wouldn't turn on at all" so you mean no lights, no fans, ect., or do you mean sits at the POST screen?

If its the first option I've never heard of anything like that. If its the second, its likely that the jumpers on the drive are mis-configured for the machine you installed the drive in, or there are settings in that machine's BIOS which are incompatible with that drive.

I guess that would explain the brands, then.

By "wouldn't turn on at all" I mean the fans and leds would flash for a fraction of a second. No POST, no errors, no green light on the monitor.

I tried it with the jumpers on master, slave, and cs, so it wasn't that.

I've worked with a pretty good amount of systems too, and usually a broken drive just doesn't register, or gets a disk read error, or that one about media cables that I used to get a lot. The complete lack of power is pretty new to me too, and I don't even understand how that's possible, because even if the +5 and -5 aren't connecting, it should still boot just fine.

Anyways, since it's such a weird thing that I've never seen happen before, I'm gonna buy a new enclosure from radio shack and try it on a more familiar system.

[EHaskins]

Originally Posted by BordomBeThyName

I guess that would explain the brands, then.

By "wouldn't turn on at all" I mean the fans and leds would flash for a fraction of a second. No POST, no errors, no green light on the monitor.

I tried it with the jumpers on master, slave, and cs, so it wasn't that.

I've worked with a pretty good amount of systems too, and usually a broken drive just doesn't register, or gets a disk read error, or that one about media cables that I used to get a lot. The complete lack of power is pretty new to me too, and I don't even understand how that's possible, because even if the +5 and -5 aren't connecting, it should still boot just fine.

Anyways, since it's such a weird thing that I've never seen happen before, I'm gonna buy a new enclosure from radio shack and try it on a more familiar system.

Sounds like a reasonable plan. Although RadioShack is probably the most expensive place to get an enclosure. If you're willing to wait a few days order one from Newegg.com or a similar site.

[BordomBeThyName]

Originally Posted by EHaskins

Sounds like a reasonable plan. Although RadioShack is probably the most expensive place to get an enclosure. If you're willing to wait a few days order one from Newegg.com or a similar site.

Radioshack is really my only option right now. I'm not really working under "normal circumstances". I'm at a 6 week stay at Carnegie Mellon University, so I don't really have my car, and radioshack is the only place within reasonable distance. I could order from newegg, but I don't feel like dealing with the university post office.