Hi,
I just upgraded to a new processor, memory & mother board and lost 2 hard drives. The processor upgrade was from a quad core 775 to i7 & the memory was from 2 x 1GB ddr3 to 3 x 2GB ddr3. The 2 hard drives I lost were both HP(grrr)Fujitsu MBA3300RC's and the controller an Adaptec 3405. I also have 2 Seagate ST3300655SS's that I can still detect. I know HP & Dell use proprietary firmware in their components because I've read about the incompatibility of their SCSI cards on systems other than their own. I bought the 2 HP Fujitsu's on eBay about 18 months ago, from a seller I would definitely consider reputable and had there been a compatibility issue I know I could have gotten my money back asap., but there was no compatibility problem the drives worked perfectly and I have had no problems with them whatsoever until this incident. The adaptec bios is unable to detect either drive at boot up, they both didn't disappear at the same time either, the second an hour or two after the first. Because only on drive disappeared initially, I started with switching cables(w/ power off) and rebooting numerous times, I googled and found the 'spin the bottle trick', it didn't work, also the 'zip lock freezer bag trick' , put the drive in the deep freeze for an hour, and it didn't work either. Shortly after that I found the second drive was no longer detected either, it was at this point I figured it has got to be a firmware issue ala Hewlett Packard. But if this is the case, why now? Why after 18 months of problem free use?
There is some very expensive software out there, SCSI Toolbox, Bus Trace 8.0 etc.... but I haven't got 5 or 6K to spend and data recovery for 1K is my last resort. The last few days I have been experimenting with boot disk utilities from UBCD, UBCD4WIN & WINBUILDER, but I have not come across a hdd program that has been of help. I'm afraid my lack of programming knowhow(command lines, dos & Linux) is holding me back.
I'm hoping you folks at Computer Hope might be able to help,
Thanks, scud
