Hard drive issue

[snappwrench]

Hello all, I have an external HDD and it wont work through the external setup so I pulled it out and plugged it in internally but when I hit the power button to my PC I just hear a little pop from the power supply or HDD and nothing. I unplug the drive and reset my power supply and all is well. I'm asking about this since it has happened to 2 HDDs and same result with multiple CPUs and OSs, so my question is what could possibly be the problem as both externals we're in perfect working order and then not after a couple days? Anyone else have this problem? No CPU will even start with either drive plugged in.

[SecretCode]

Since the system won't boot with the drive plugged in, it sounds like it's damaged. Could be something like a short across the power lines.

Are you saying this happened on two separate drives? within a couple of days of first using them? That's highly worrying and suggests you have something like mains power spikes, or earthquakes.

If it's just one, or two old drives that failed at different times, then you may just be unlucky. Hard drives don't last forever.

Not sure what else to suggest without further details.

[snappwrench]

Yeah they're both about a year old and they're both externals that stopped working after a road trip across state so not sure. They actually belong to a friend and I thought I would ask to see if anyone had similar problems and what the fix was but pretty sure it was a power spike or something cause it's happened to an internal drive of his in the past so thinking they're just bad. They both stopped working at the same time also which is why I thought to ask, seems pretty strange.

[SecretCode]

My only thought is that if they suddenly stopped working completely, it's a controller problem not a disk surface / read head problem, and you might be able to gain access to the data by replacing the controller hardware. I haven't heard of that being done however

[oshunluvr]

Sounds like a short somewhere. I assume you verified the cables you used were good (at least some drive works with them).

[snappwrench]

Yeah the external hardware works with other drives but I actually pulled the HHDs out and put them in my desktop to try and establish a connection but all it did was cut my power supply, then I have to reset the power supply without the drives plugged in to get my PC running again so there has to be a short in the drives them selves or something. That's all I can really think of.

[HalationEffect]

Is it possible that your PC's PSU is at (or near to) its limit, and adding an extra HDD to your system puts it over the top?

[snappwrench]

My system is minimal and my power supply is a 600 watt so no probs there, only have two HDDs plugged in and I checked each drive one by one so i'm thinking they are just bad at this point.