Re: A Sorry Tale of Deskstars & Drive Caddies

Previously Terry Pin <Terry_member@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This story may also be known as ?When In A Hole Stop Digging?

> Some weeks ago I added a SATA drive Caddy to my desktop, it already
> had an EIDE caddy manufactured buy the same company
> http://www.icydock.com which I used to help with system backups and
> archiving.

> One day I installed an IDE drive (Deskstar 250GB) in the caddy
> booted the PC and the drive wasn?t recognised, I tried again with a
> second drive same make and size and again that wasn?t recognised not
> even by the BIOS.

> Gave up and went to work, came back and tried again this time with
> my Big Maxtor (320GB) but n not recognised. Tried again with a
> smaller 82Gbdrive (same problem)

Well, I think you should have stopped and investigated about 3 drives
back....

> Then the ghastly truth dawned on me I?d forgotten that I?d installed
> the SATA caddy and had been slotting the EIDE drives in this one by
> mistake. Tried the EIDE drive in the proper caddy and it the BIOS
> didn?t see it, now it really was shot. Bypassed the caddy housing
> and connected straight on the cable but no better. Nearly 1Tb of
> storage destroyed as a result of my own incompetence although why
> the manufacturer didn?t ? key? the drive caddy and it?s
> housing so that different types couldn?t be interchanged I?ll never
> know.

Actually I would not be so hard on you. The incompetence is the
manufacturers obviously. Not sure what exactly it could have
been, but it almost certainly needs to have been something
with the power connections. If they really managed to make
two caddies that can go into each other slots _but_ have
different power connections, I can only call this an accident
waiting to happen.

The things you can blame yourself for is buying dangerous
equipment form an incompetent manufacturer (hard to find out,
I once spent about a week tracing SATA problems to badly
manufactured PCBs in a hot-swap enclosure. I had bought
3 of them at that time) and not getting suspicious earlier.

Let me re-iterate: If the manufacturer actually made the
SATA housings into IDE deathtraps, most of the blame is
on them for grossly incompetent design.

However you should first make absolutely sure the disks are really
gone by tryong them in a different PC.

> So in a desperate attempt to get the drives up and running just to
> recover data on them I thought I?d try and source an identical unit
> and swap the drive logic boards. Tried with the Maxtor and Hey
> Presto it was up and running no problem and I managed to recover
> everything.

O.K. if the board-swap did it for the Maxtor then the board
seems indeed to have been shot.

> Then got a new 250gb Deskstar and tried the same with the first duff
> unit but no luck, swapped the new board over to the second duff unit
> but again no luck, put the new board back on it?s original drive you
> guessed it this drive could no longer be seen by the BIOS.

Interessting.

> Oh yes I was now the proud owner of 3 duff Hitachi 250Gb Deskstars.

Sad.

> So anyone got any ideas, I can?t afford a professional data recovery
> service, the drives spin up OK, with no clicking so I?m sure it?s
> just the board I?ve made sure that the model numbers are identical
> not sure about firmware revs though, anyone got any clues here?

Personally I think you should cut your losses. And never buy anyting
from ICY-DOCK again. You can also try to contact them, maybe they
have some bad conscience about their screw-up, but I doubt it.

Arno

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