Well I was playing away early last night and powered down my PC to go and have dinner. When I finished I went back upstairs to join the Friday night revelry on the MH and to my consternation my PC failed to boot. It could not see the primary disk drive. So I messed about and tried different power connectors and forcing a re-discover via the BIOS but no luck. :crying:
This morning I found an old 210MB disk (yes they used to be that small) and connected that and lo it worked OK, didn't know I had an old OS/2 build lying around. So I know it isn't the power or connector but the disk drive. Basically it just doesn't power up. No spinning noises or anything. There were no funny noises when I used it earlier and it all powered down OK.
Does anyone have any ideas or am I well and truly rodgered?
It doesn't sound good if all you did was boot down the computer to cause it. Try putting it into another system to test it, but I'd check my budget for a new HDD if I were you.
if it doesnt work on a different pc like T-bag suggested, try putting it in an airtight bag and put it in your freezer for a couple of mins, then try again (they use this method when the jelly stuff under the arm goes kaput, nothing to do with power, but worth a shot anyways)
Before going to such lengths - wiggle the power connector in the drive. Sometimes the tiny connectors inside the plug in the disk fail. Inspect the drive to see if there are any broken connections in the power plug on the drive. This is very common in IBM/Hitachi disks...
Have a look into the tips mentioned above but also if you have another pc try the drive in that. Sometimes the ide cables etc wear out or if you don't have a spare rig to hand use a usb to ide/ sata lead as those are always useful to see if a drive is working. If the freezer method works and it dies after it warms up you may need to consider doing the same method over and over until you get all your precious data off. Good luck sorting this out Snooks.