The hard drive from my wifes computer is possesed by the devil! Hard drive:3 Me: 0

[mainegreen]

My wifes computer started acting flaky one afternoon. Next thing I knew, here computer was toast. TOAST. No BIOS screen at all. Didn't matter if you unplugged everything, flashed the BIOS or anything. It was a paperweight.

Well, the wife insisted that there were files she needed on the hard drive, so I drag out a back server, take it apart and put it in a tower. Boots up. Place her hard drive in it, POOF, that server is a brick. Dead: no BIOS.

Stupidly, I presumed that I must have shorted out the server while working on it, zapping it somehow. Never thought the hard drive might be super-evil, capable of destroying a computer BEFORE the BIOS screen comes up.

So I place it in MY computer, in a spare slot, attached as a slave device. Guess what? MY pc is now a paperweight. Toast. Kaput. I have three dead computers. THREE!!!!! God knows how this hard drive can destroy a motherboard before the BIOS screen. Are there viruses that can wipe a BIOS that also live in the hard driver buffer? Or is it just evil, capable of flooding any computer with the misfortune of attaching to it with bad juju?

I'm now on the el-crapo backup-backup Mac. The hard drive of freaking doom is going to be smashed and placed in a dumpster.

Thankfully, most of the computers were nearing the 'replace because we're starting to age' part of their life cycle, but this is a first for me. Bricking so many computers, so fast.


x(

[Pierre.Suave]

1. Is it possible that

the HDD had some electrical fault inside it that may have caused a short or something when power was applied to it?

[mainegreen]

3. I have no idea.

I'm taking my PC in to the office on this slim hope that our super-genius hardware guy can salvage it.

[csziggy]

2. There used to be BIOS attacking viruses, but most modern BIOS are protected

Maybe an electrical fault in the circuit board on the hard drive is killing computers?

[mainegreen]

4. I suspect evil spirits.

[csziggy]

5. That is what I thought my XP computer had - evil spirits

It turned out that the mother board AND the power supply both had bad capacitors. Swollen, leaking orange stuff capacitors. The thing would work fine for a bit then go flakey - for about 18 months. Good brands, too - Asus and Thermaltake.

Gave me the excuse to upgrade the mobo, CPU and memory so it wasn't all bad.

[DarkTirade]

6. Yeah, I'm thinking electrical short or something.

However if that's the case, one can hope that all it did was fry something on the motherboard. So instead of needing to replace three computers, you might just have to replace or repair three motherboards.

[mainegreen]

7. yeah, I'm newegging it right now.

I've got a small warehouse of parts, so I'm gonna throw something together. But still, 3 computers?

I must be stupid for putting it in the third one!

:banghead:

[MilesColtrane]

8. Your Mac is a piece of crap, yet it's the only one working for you?

Hope you get things fixed.

[mainegreen]

9. it's ANCIENT.

CD drive doesn't work, display issues. But, it never touched the hard drive of doom, so it's still alive.

x(

Going to buy a new mobo I think.