YOUR Verdict REQUESTED: Dead hard drive(s) or dead motherboard?

After 7 glorious years running my grungy old 2001 Dell 4100 (never again, I declare!), I finally got the blue screen of death. Power down, power back up. Of course, nada. Here are the various diagnostics that don't recognize the (primary master, Seagate something or other) IDE hard drive:

* BIOS
* Seagate Diagnostic
* GHOST Recovery Disc
* Ubuntu Live CD

None of these methods even SEE the primary hard drive. So, it's toast, right? Well, here's the twist. I also have a second hard drive ((primary slave, the old 40 GB Maxtor that came with the system way back when) which I formatted over years ago and use just as storage for the Norton Ghost backups (luckily, every Friday morning). So, it should be easy enough to restore from there, yeah? Well, none of those diagnostics see the second hard drive either. What are the chances of simultaneous catastrophic hard drive crashes on two hard drives? Mind you, all the diagnostics continue to see both a DVD drive and a CD drive. So, here's what I think, because I'm an optimist: It is the motherboard IDE connection, either in the motherboard itself, or in the IDE cable. There's still data on those drives, dammit! So, should I go pick up an IDE to USB external hard drive enclosure, or should I pick up an IDE cable, or should I trash everything?

My first instict would be to check the cables. Try swapping the ide cables on the motherboard. See if the drives come up.

Take the path of least resistance. Try an IDE cable that is not crispy.

I also tried hooking the same IDE cable into the other connector: nothing.

Will swap out the cables.

VERDICT: The Seagate drive, which was the primary master, failed. T'wasn't the cables or the MB, but the hard drive. The MB wouldn't recognize the backup because it was still set as slave and connected through the same IDE cable as the primary. So, I disconnected the Seagate drive and set the old Maxtor as master, booted up, and saw that BIOS now recognized the Maxtor HD. So I slid in my Norton Ghost recovery CD, rebooted, and ta-da...there are all the recovery points. I'm currently transferring them over.

It's ironic, since I got the Seagate (120gb) more recently, in 2003, and it failed first. This thing was defragged constantly and partitioned responsibly. It was maintained well.

In any case, the data's all there, the system's all there, and the motherboard is still in working order. The old horse lives! I think I will go on Tiger or Newegg and get a cheap IDE drive (Maxtor!), and recover the whole system. The wife decided that the BSOD was a sign for me to get a new computer, so I got one, but I'll still tinker with my very old and robust friend.

I really just used it for programming and learning, though, so it didn't have much data on it. I could rev it up with 8.04 right now, matter of fact...

:-)

When I get home I will set up the wife's new computer and transfer her data, then turn the old one into a Linux jukebox. :-)

We are gonna have music all over da place!