Hard Drive Problem

[Wendell Wadsworth]

    I live alongside a major interstate, and weather was bad. Apparently someone had wrecked into a pole. The power went on and off rapidly about six times. Hours later, when it finally came on, and I turned my PC on, there was a HD fail;ure, and everytime it attempted to boot up, it would tell me to restart. Thinking it was my OS ( WinXP Pro ) I formatted, and reinstalled with the Windows boot discs. It worked, but not well. Windows did manage to boot up after that, though the overall speed is so horrible, you wouldn't believe. It would take a half hour, nearly to get to my desktop, when it would normally take less then two minutes.

    Since that happened, I tried making my HD a slave, then back to master.  It works, but is doing the same thing. Occassionally while booting my computer locks up.

I would like to know if this was caused by the blackout I experienced? I wouldn't imagine why, but nothing would really surprise me.  I just hate having to spend money on a new HD, and/or waiting weeks for the replacement. Help!

Thank you.

[Cain Clifton]

Hey dude,

  Yep, sounds to me like that little car wreak ended up frying your HD. What probably happened is when the power was about to fail, the hub outside attempted to keep it on (explains the 6 flashes) then died. When it tried to keep the power on I don't think it controlled the electric flow very well. So it probably accidentally sent a large quanity of electricty to your PC and fried the HD.

   I would have guess otherwise if you hadn't reformated already. Not that that's a bad thing. It was the right thing most likely but that limits the other options. You have already wipped your PC clean so the only other explenation is either a fried HD. Or maybe, noe that I think of it, you processor is messed up.

  Try this, take your HD and install it on another PC. If it boots up no problem then it's not your HD and probably your Processor. If it still has problems then I would say it's fried. But I am no professional. So take my advice with a grain of salt!

Cain

[Wendell Wadsworth]

   Thanks, Cain. I'll try using the HD with another computer.. that is once I can actually get to a computer I can connect it into. I just hope its not my processor. Otherwise I'm in a deeper hole then what I thought I had been in the first place.

  Thanks again for the help. I'm still up to hearing any other suggestions anyone might want to throw in.

[merlin_2]

what is the make of the hard drive?