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It looks like I will be building a new computer.
The motherboard, it seems is better toasted than we had thought. While it boots to BIOS fine upon pulling my CMOS battery there was a nasty burn ring on it, and trying to boot a few different Linux distros from USB returned issues every time, with the system trying to boot in only to start throwing errors and then crashing.
As for my hard drives . . . toasted. We're hoping I can eventually find a few donor drives to try simply replacing the drive boards, since the drives TRY to spin up, but attempting to access them via external USB adaptor on both the desktop and two separate laptops returned nada for any of them.
My power failure, it seems, was worse than I'd thought.
So, what does this mean for me?
Well, for one thing it means that the Backup Fairy has not been kind to me. See, I had recently cleared off the USB drive I typically use to back up all my documents due to needing it for another project and hadn't gotten back around to re-backing things up. As a result, yeah: I've lost months of work both on book editing for PFH and Phoenix Soars as well as my full-resolution covers for them, not to mention every other story file I've ever written. So, with hope those will all eventually be recoverable, but for now? Nope.
For the foreseeable future this lil' laptop will be my only access to the 'net. I'm thankful I've got it at least.
I'm not gonna let this get me down. Instead, I'm gonna focus on what I do have, namely a writing-capable laptop and a lot less distractions given its limitations. I may be indefinitely suspending my work on my other projects (including my music, unfortunately,) but I've got my feelers out on a few jobs that could be good for me, and I've got keyboards to type with.
Bring it on, life. Bring it on.
Melanie E.
Comments
Sorry to hear that Hon......
But always remember, it could be much worse!
I know that sometimes that is little comfort, but trust me - it is the truth.
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Ditto
I’m sure Melanie knows but, yes, the power supply is an extremely critical part of your computer and its failure can destroy much more in value than the mere cost of the power supply.
It is not a component that should be cheaped out on even if it means saving longer for a better one that meets the power needs of the system, plus a comfortable power margin to allow for aging and reliability.
My personal rule of thumb is for system load to be no more than 70% of the rating of the power supply.
I am fortunate to have a good income to get really good ones.
Personally, a Seasonic Prime Gold series with a 12 year warranty gives me peace of mind with the added benefit Seasonics are known for their over engineering, giving it a bit more headroom.
I currently have a ton of drives
Just sitting around, waiting for me to take them to recycling. If you can PM me a list, I will see what I have. Take care
What issues the Linux distros return?
Could you post an excerpt, please? Maybe not all is lost for that motherboard. Best try distros that don't have graphic interface - there you will see the issues better. They might also be recorded in the files /var/log/dmesg, /var/log/syslog, /var/log/messages, /var/log/daemon and/or /var/log/kernel (depending on the distro) - posting these, or sending them might bring help. :)
I would also ask for the models of your hard drives. And would counsel you to try them attached internally to at least two different desktops and checked with the standard Linux tools (hwinfo, smartctl etc) before you declare them dead. External USB adaptors often do not provide enough voltage or amperage as supply to power a marginally damaged disk; desktop PSUs usually do.
Such bad power failures are usually caused by a problem in the PSU unit. It might be activated by a grid surge or like, but an even marginally properly working PSU should 100% protect your PC from that instead of frying it. Change your PSU and CMOS battery, and you might be able to salvage the PC.
The PSU fried itself, no surge necessary.
The thing was well-used, running near-constantly for the last 5 years even through having its cooling fan burn out about 2 years ago to be replaced with a jury-rigged case fan.
The hard drives in question were a WD Caviar Blue and a Caviar Black (I thought they were both Blacks: I was mistaken upon checking.) While we used a SATA to USB adapter to test them on different systems the adapter itself has a wall wart for powering it, something my friend bought specifically so he knew it would have the juice to power any drive he threw at it. The drives try to tick over, but stop almost immediately. All the devices we tested them out with were either in BIOS or Linux, and in all cases the drives absolutely refuse to show up as devices at all.
We tried Ubuntu, Mint, and I believe Arch as far as USB Linux installs go, and none of them would so much as initialize, failing at memory and hardware tests. This MIGHT simply mean my RAM is fried too, but if I've gotta replace drives and RAM and everything else then at that point . . . .
Melanie E.