A wtf day.

[BobBarr]

So after getting home from classes today after standing outside in the cold for an hour due to a bomb threat I went to boot up my comp and walked away. Later I came back and I find a black screen and an error message saying no bootable drives found. So I was pissed like you normally would be because I lost three hard drives worth of data.Yea not just the o/s EVERYTHING. I started throwing stuff etc but whatever. I start a reinstall of my win7 and check once again if my drives were wiped and they were in fact wiped. I reinstall and start to load my software and device drivers and after over an hour of working on my linksys wireless g adapter and having no success my temper starts to heighten but w/e. So I test all my hardware and everything works but my wireless card. I used every possible driver from linksys support and even the one I used before I lost all my data. It's a no go. The card is definitely dead. I bring my dilemma into class and discuss what could've gone wrong that would wipe all my data and fry my pci card. We led to nowhere that makes any sense. I was using a surge protector( I unplug everything when I leave anyway), my o/s was clean and I was sure I had no malware,viruses w/e. I know that everything was working fine when I left it the night before. Now I'm here to find answers. Can anyone suggest what could have brought about this nightmare and advise me if you had any of the same problems?
All in all I lost all my years worth of work, programs, irreplaceable files(that I had backed up to a separate drive just for backups which is now blank of course) and all I want to know at this point what could have possibly done this. Thanks to any support from the community, I'm gonna go rage now.

 

[Phxprovost]

may i suggest taking a shotgun to the pc and starting 100% fresh with a new rig? It would allow you express all your hatred and aggression towards your pc and then afterwards you can do the new pc happy dance when your parts come in the mail?

 

[hat]

wow, even your external? power surge doesn't make sense if your stuff is still working (minus the pci card) but the data was wiped... maybe something magnetic/emp?

 

[Steevo]

PCI clocks out of spec from overclocking could cause drive corruption, and kill sensitive devices on the PCI bus.
Powersupply issue.
Surge on the mains.
The card could have died and taken the drives with it by some freack chance.


Before you reformat anything else, then you should try a drive recovery utility, and or a drive health utility, and test your entire system before investing more time and money in a failing system if there is somethign wrong. I once spent 6 hours on a failed drive controller.



The only real backup is one that stays safe from the source, like a removable hard drive, or a burned DVD/Blu-Ray.

 

[r9]

wow, even your external? power surge doesn't make sense if your stuff is still working (minus the pci card) but the data was wiped... maybe something magnetic/emp?

EMP - James Bond EMP stuff ? . I think that HDD drives are protected from EMP.

 

[CJCerny]

You've tried the drives in another PC to see if there's data there? Even replaced the controller boards on the drives?

 

[MKmods]

ALWAYS remove the drives and try to save stuff off a dif computer if you have anything important before you erase anything.

When I have a really shitty day like that I go to the movies and chill before I screw anything else up.

And if you fill out the Computer Specs it makes it easier or us to be useful..

 

[mcloughj]

find it hard to believe that three drive just blanked themselves irreversibly. Get yourself a hiren's boot disc and play around with the recovery programs. all your stuff is still there it just needs to be found.

 

[TripleDesi]

Power Surge

I'm assuming your hard drives are "fried" and not wiped. If you are saying the hard drives are literally wiped clean but readable, then I'm sorry, I think you have a stalker who's out to get you.

If various parts of your computer have summarily fried, then it's got to be a power surge. Your surge protector may have malfunctioned - I had one in 2006 take my stereo equipment to hell and back.

Just my 2 cents.

P.S. Sorry for being cynical, but if indeed your hard disks were wiped clean, I'm worried for you. You have an antisocial element lurking thereabouts. Did you have any fight with anyone lately. Scorned girlfriend perhaps? Fatal Attraction types?

 

[etrigan420]

I'm assuming your hard drives are "fried" and not wiped. If you are saying the hard drives are literally wiped clean but readable, then I'm sorry, I think you have a stalker who's out to get you.

If various parts of your computer have summarily fried, then it's got to be a power surge. Your surge protector may have malfunctioned - I had one in 2006 take my stereo equipment to hell and back.

Just my 2 cents.

P.S. Sorry for being cynical, but if indeed your hard disks were wiped clean, I'm worried for you. You have an antisocial element lurking thereabouts. Did you have any fight with anyone lately. Scorned girlfriend perhaps? Fatal Attraction types?

I was thinking the exact same thing. If the hard drives are just blanked, but still functional (which it looks like from the OP)...then there is definitely some tomfoolery afoot!

Sounds like *some* sort of human intervention happened somewhere along the line.

 

[Steevo]

A fried drive couldn't reinstall windows. It would be dead. A drive that has suffered a controller malfunction can damage the MBR/bootsector/data but not really kill a drive so that it works later.

 

[2wicked]

A fried drive couldn't reinstall windows. It would be dead. A drive that has suffered a controller malfunction can damage the MBR/bootsector/data but not really kill a drive so that it works later.

Also a bad/corrupt or missing MFT (Master File Table) can make a drive unreadable or blank (and all data still be there).

 

[AphexDreamer]

Are you a Sagittarius because I had 1 heck of day today too.

 

[etrigan420]

A fried drive couldn't reinstall windows. It would be dead. A drive that has suffered a controller malfunction can damage the MBR/bootsector/data but not really kill a drive so that it works later.

But what are the odds that some sort of mechanical / electrical failure caused a controller malfunction on *three* seperate hard drives, yet left everything else (except his wireless adapter) intact?

Just seems highly suspicious to me.

 

[Steevo]

Also a bad/corrupt or missing MFT (Master File Table) can make a drive unreadable or blank (and all data still be there).

A corrupt MFT will only show the drive as damaged, but still bootable. The message he got tells us that the boot sector is either damaged or corrupt. If the boot sector was still intact the hook and jump would take place and the boot error message would not be one from the BIOS, but either one from windoes, or nothign else would happen.

But what are the odds that some sort of mechanical / electrical failure caused a controller malfunction on *three* seperate hard drives, yet left everything else (except his wireless adapter) intact?

Just seems highly suspicious to me.

It is, but the weakest links are usually the hard drives as they have tiny wiring inside the heads. I have seen more head failures on drives (the click of death) than any other failure. And power issues are the most reasonable suspect as we know a CPU can take a bit of overvoltage as it has chokes and other wiring to filter and protect, memory can take a bit of overvoltage as it too has regulators, but the drives are connected directly to the PSU with no volage regulation. The PCI bus uses the 3.3v provided by the powersupply rail directly. So more than likely the culprit was a powersupply, a surge or spike causing overvoltage on the 3.3v output and damaging the card on the PCI bus, the controller on the bus and causing corruption of the drives.

 

[Papahyooie]

get those backup drives out of your computer before you overwrite them! Data doesnt just disappear off hard drives. as long as you dont overwrite them, your files can be recovered.

 

[BobBarr]

The drives are 100% working and the o/s ran fine after my reinstall of win 7 x64. I did a power supply test and it appears to be working properly and I left the computer run for 2 hours to notice if there were any irregularities. I brought the drives in to our building to my instructor and we hooked them up to our system that we put together just for recovering lost data. We were not able to recover anything at all, as if the data was never even there. Over the events that transpired my first thoughts wandered over this "Operation Aurora" crap and everything thats been happening but I know that those threats are unlikely in this situation. Some of my friends said it sounded like I got hacked. I was told to put a call into Comcast to see if they could provide answers which I know they won't.
My linksys card is def gone. KIA I guess. Before when opening my case I noticed a faint smell that I didn't recognize and after testing everything I can only assume it came from the fried card.

I really am considering selling off my parts that I know work and either work on a new build or wait until I got my stuff with graduation stuff done etc.

To the comment about someone deliberately coming in my house to screw with my stuff I can say this. No one in my abode has any technical knowledge of computers at all. I convinced my dad to change the locks after my crazy gf(we've all had em). And unless someone from the CIA came into my house then I can safely say this didn't happen in a physical form and I have a lock on the back of my case anyway. Still working on it for a few more hours as I type this.

Cheers!