Simultaneous Catastrophic HDD Failure x3

[BladeOfAnduril]

I hope you all are having a better day than I...

So, my desktop isn't really anything too fancy. Quad-core AMD Athlon II, Asus motherboard, Nvidia GTX460, onboard audio, 4GB Corsair XMS RAM, Corsair GS800 PSU and three hard drives. A 2TB WD Black (backups and multimedia), a 640GB WD Blue (programs) and a 300GB WD VelociRaptor (system).

I was enjoying some L4D2 on Wednesday evening and while I was playing the system just completely died (no, it didn't overheat, I can see CPU and GPU temps in screen as I play). At first it didn't want to turn on. When I pressed the power button, the HDD light would flash, but nothing would happen. I opened the case. Pressed again, the fans all pulsed for a split second, but nothing else. I removed power from the system and let it sit. Plugged it back in and tried to boot it. It started up, but would not boot. I went into the BIOS, and none of the hard drives are there. The DVD drive is (which shares a PSU lead with two of the HDDs) fine and seen by the BIOS. I swapped the connector from it to one of the hard drives. No good. I grabbed and different power supply and hooked it up... no good. I didn't have another chassis laying around, so I pulled the hard drives and took them to my in-laws and tried them there.

They are all dead. Completely dead. They don't spin up. I don't understand how this happens while everything else in the box is fine.

Two of the three are under warranty, so hopefully they can be replaced. Thoughts of what may have caused this? I suspect PSU or motherboard. I don't want to put new HDDs in and have the same thing happen again. Thanks for any input.

 

[Rogue007]

WOW, never heard of that before.
My 1st thought was PSU, but then if it produced the kind of power spike etc that could take out 3 HDD's then you would expect the motherboard or cpu to have been damaged too. They could be running of a different rail in the PSU though, and maybe only the 1 rail produced a problem. Or maybe the motherboards protective circuitry saved it. (I'm getting a bit out of my depth here with the internals of a PSU).
Had they worked in another pc, then I may of suspected the mobo's sata controller had failed. But you've ruled this out.
You've been very unlucky though to lose all 3, you'd done the right thing too by having a back up drive.
Best of luck.

 

[evilsofa]

Some simple sleuth work might get you a clue about what happened.

Use a flashlight and a magnifying glass to closely inspect all of the following: the power sockets and the SATA sockets on the hard drives; both ends of the SATA cables; ALL of the ends of the power cables from the PSU, especially the SATA power cables and the large 24-pin motherboard power cable; the SATA sockets on the motherboard; the area of the motherboard around the SATA sockets; the large 24-pin power socket on the motherboard. Look for anything that looks scorched, melted, bulging, broken, missing, or otherwise not looking right.

Remove the motherboard from the case. As you do so, take care to note whether anything that shouldn't be there is between the motherboard and the case, particularly a loose screw or cable, but also even something trivial like a piece of paper or a clump of dust or hair. Inspect the area on the back of the motherboard near the SATA sockets.

 

[Aesma]

There is a short somewhere in all likelihood.

One of my WC pumps had a catastrophic failure, the motor shorted and this burned to a crisp the power cable it was connected on from the modular connector to the Molex it was on. I discarded the cable, the pump and the modular connector, and the PSU soldiers on more than a year later. Fortunately I'm wary of pumps and fans and never put them on the same cables as HDDs.