Ciaran, wrong connection - please advise

[DerekW]

Aren't we lucky having a computer expert running the forum?

Ciaran, I've just made a major gilhooly. Fitting a new m/board and CPU into an oldish case I of course read the instructions thoroughly, unfortunately one of the problems I have seems to be that info sometimes gets garbled twixt eyes and brain.

The case front USB connection terminates in eight separate mini sockets rather than a single jobbie. When I came to fit these to the motherboard plug I misread the motherboard picture and put them on the IEEE 1394a header instead of the USB one (see what I mean about info getting garbled!). The computer booted up OK, complicated by having to format a new SATA drive, but eventually all was done and the new copy of XP installed.

I then decided to test the front USB sockets. I couldn't use something cheap and unimportant could I? It had to be my 250Gb external drive (Seagate Barracuda) which contained all, ALL my XM files plus lots of other stuff. Plugged into the front of it were two USB.2 memory drives, the first clue that there was something wrong was that they got rather warm! The second was that neither they nor the Seagate appeared on the "My computer" list.

OK, you can stop laughing now, it's not that funny!

The memory drives don't matter, they're cooked anyway. The question is, is the ext. hard drive salvageable? Or is there any way I can recover the info?

Sorry to be a bother.

Derek

[Ciaran]

Hi Derek,

Not a bother at all, is an easy mistake to make, sounds like you have been unfortunate enough to get the supply voltage from the fireware down the 'data' lines for the USB, or stick 12 / 5v somewhere it shouldn't have gone...

If you look at the typical wiring configuration for both:





You can see that pins 7 and 8 on the firewire are +12v, where the USB interface would expect ground, and pins 3 and 4 are ground on the firewire, where the USB was expecting data, so in essence you'd have grounded any plugged in device via its data ports and sent 12v somewhere that was not intended for large voltages. I'd agree your devices are fried.

Regarding your hard drive though, there may be a reprieve. Based on the fact its in a USB enclosure, with luck the drive itself is probably fine, and hopefully just the USB interface has been fried.

I would start by removing it from the USB caddy, then you can see if it'll work independantly. What size is the external drive, is it the small 2.5" laptop type, or the larger, heavier 3.5" SATA?
If its standard Sata you may be in luck, it'll plug straight into your motherboard.

Failing that, alls not lost. Even if the drive electronics are also fried, chances are the innards are fine, so it would be possible to mount the PCB of another, identical drive onto it, and recover the data...

Easy mistake to make, I've done it myself.

[DerekW]

Thanks very much, Ciaran. The drive has a standard power supply so it isn't a SATA. I'll try to connect it direct to see what's what - paying particular attention to connections!

If as I suspect, I have to replace the hard drive PCB, from your experience would Seagate sell me a separate PCB? If not I suppose I could buy an identical drive and swap the board from new old.

Thanks once again, I'll keep you posted on developments.

Derek

[Ciaran]

Hi Derek,

You can try Seagate, but they normally won't entertain it, or will say something like 'Sure, send your dead drive back and we'll replace / repair it, but you loose your data'.

The problem is if you do change the PCB it has to be identical, right down to firmware revision etc, as they change them sometimes. The good thing is they're a very common drive, so it shouldn't be too hard to get sorted out. What model number and size is it? I'll see if we have any in work.

Ciarán

[DerekW]

To quote a famous boxer (Jake LaMotta?) - someone up there likes me, or to put it another way, there is a god and his name is Ciaran.

Took the Seagate out of its housing today, plugged it in and it works!!! .

All my files are saved!

Cheers, mate!

Derek

[demag]

Err, back them up to another drive maybe?

Not knocking you Derek. I'm as guilty as anyone else for being a bit slapdash backing up. But while sheer panic is still on your mind of thinking you'd lost the lot, now is the time to do it.

[Ciaran]

Glad you got sorted Derek, nothing more heart stopping, butt clenching, whatever you want to call it, than when you think you've lost the lot....

As Dave says, its easy to forget the backup, but now, while its still panic stations, is a good time to sort one out.

I went through my data and was ruthless, only marking things I absolutely had to keep, the vast majority of stuff could be obtained again, the likes of MP3s etc, there's actually very little core documents / data.
Out of some 40 or 50GB of personal crap, not to mention a few hundred GB of generally dowloaded apps etc, only maybe a couple of hundred meg is stuff I absolutely have to keep.

Ciarán