SATA Keeps system from working

[ardan]

Hi All,

I have a Dell with a SATA drive, The computer shut down and gives the flashing amber light. The flashing amber light Dell says is usally a power supply problem. If I pull the HD and put it in another computer I get the same problem. Either computer will boot fine without the SATA drive. Even if I try the SATA drive as a second drive the computer will not launch...

In Short - Whatever Computer this SATA drive is plugged into will not even get to the boot screen. Since I cannot boot, even with CD, how can I run any utilities to try to recover some data........

Thanks,,,,,,

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[rvnguy]

What was the early life/use of this drive?

Was it connected to either of these PC's?

Your Dell is SATA, was this drive a second drive?

What type of drive are they able to boot from? ide or sata?

If this drive was part of one of these systems how/what occurred that indicated a failure?

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[ardan]

Hi,
I will try to answer the questions best I can.....

What was the early life/use of this drive? - This is the drive that came with the computer, about 8 months old..General Use PC.

Was it connected to either of these PC's? - Yes this was the only hard drive in the computer...

Your Dell is SATA, was this drive a second drive? The second drive referred to taking the broke drive and putting it in a second computers that had a working SATA drive. I put the broken drive in as a second drive. With the broken drive just plugged in the computer would no longer work...

If this drive was part of one of these systems how/what occurred that indicated a failure? -- The drive would not spin up and the computer would not boot, only a flashing amber light...

Summary: Sunday the computer just stopped working, screen when black and the power light was flashing. I unplugged the computer from the wall and waited about a minute plugged the computer back in with same results. I removed the hard drive and the computer would boot (from cd or usb drive) plugged the hard drive back in and it wouldn't. So I took a hard drive out of another computer (same model) and the computer booted right up. Then I took the broken hard drive and plugged it into the other computer (same model) and the computer would not boot, same thing flashing amber light. So I then took the broken drive to a third computer that can take 2 sata drives, I left the working drive in the computer and hooked up the broken drive, that computer would not work. In Short, ANY computer that has this Sata Hard drive attached WILL NOT boot.....

Thanks for any ideas......I am think I should go back to plain old IDE......

Ardan....

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[rvnguy]

8 months old.....drive is under warranty....time to get an RMA

If it does not spin up as you stated trying to access is futile.

rvnguy
"I know everything..I just can't remember it all

 

[firewolfrl]

Drives go bad. from new to old it doesn't matter.
if you need the data of the drive it's gonna cost a little over $2,000 for recovery. Or you can bite the loss and RMA that drive with Dell or the harddrive manufacturer.
I don't remember if Dell has a recovery partition on the drive or not. if they do then Dell will have to supply you with recover disks so you can get the computer going again