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[goodcow]

So I posted a week or so ago about two external Seagate drives that I had gotten which I could never get to work, despite having one Seagate drive of the same model that did work.

The one that worked was connected via firewire. (PCI card)

The other two were connected via USB2 to the motherboard, and the first time I booted after getting them, the computer locked up at boot, showing my processor only as "INTE" (not even an l), and the drives never worked.

I found out that the drives were indeed dead... they wouldn't spin up at all. Now, I don't know if they arrived dead, became damaged during shipping, or if... and this concerns me, maybe the motherboard killed them?

I got two free replacement drives from Amazon today, and they're hooked up and work fine right now, again via USB2, but I'm worried about booting the computer with them connected... what if the motherboard is frying them? "Yeah, Amazon, you just sent me two replacement drives for free... and um... I killed them again somehow, I need another two." Is that even possible? I'm just concerned because two dead drives is very odd, though they were from the same order, so maybe I got a bad batch.

And though firewire would be ideally better than USB2 anyway, I'm out of firewire ports.

 

[fart]

it's possible but really unlikely. there should be a fuse in there or similar. hook it up to something else first and confirm that it's not DOA before you hook it up to your mainboard. the other thing that makes me think you're full of crack is that it's extremely unlikely that you could manage to fry the drive logic via the controller. i would chalk this up to either defects or the goodcow magic.

 

[goodcow]

Well again, the two new replacement drives work now, via USB2, connected to the motherboard... but I plugged them in while Windows was on. I haven't booted with them yet. Booting with them on is the part I'm skiddish about right now.