Is this harddrive wrecked?

Dstruct0 · 02-01-2007, 06:27 PM

I've a maxtor 200GB ata harddrive among other drives. Recently i've
reinstalled debian etch. And the power cable was plugged on and
data cable was disconnected during installation process. Is there
any chance that the harddrive can be wrecked by doing this? i'm
asking this because when i connected data cable back on, my computer
won't boot. I then replaced the data cable and it works now. I'm a
little bit worried about the drive.

Quakeboy02 · 02-01-2007, 06:46 PM

Don't worry about it. There is little to no power carried on the data cable. The drive is in more danger of being zapped because you're wearing shoes on a carpet than it is from being unplugged. If it's an 80 pin cable, those are pretty fragile and hitting it with enough force to unplug it probably damaged the cable, not the drive.

Added:
If you mean 200GB SATA, then I have to admit to deliberately plugging and unplugging SATA cables with power on and booted up while messing with device driver code.

Dstruct0 · 02-01-2007, 06:54 PM

> Don't worry about it. There is little to no power carried on the data cable.
> The drive is in more danger of being zapped because you're wearing shoes on
> a carpet than it is from being unplugged. If it's an 80 pin cable, those
> are pretty fragile and hitting it with enough force to unplug it probably
> damaged the cable, not the drive.

Glad to be relieved.

Thanks.

J.W. · 02-01-2007, 11:23 PM

Your drive should be fine. If the data cable and/or power cable is disconnected when you boot, the system should just ignore it. (As Quakeboy stated though, connecting or disconnecting power cables while the machine is powered up is a very bad idea... don't do it.)

If you have both drives connected but the system won't boot, the problem is probably a jumper issue, such as having 2 drives on the same ribbon cable both jumpered as master. To fix it, just make one the slave.