I have an office computer that killed itself last week. I didnt see it happen but we recently moved our office and an employee plugged her computer in and turned it on. She said that smoke came out the back of the PSU and it turned off.
I opened the PSU and saw that a capacitor had leaked some fluid onto the PSU board. I installed a new one and still no dice. I removed all components and managed to get the mobo to turn on. Anyway, I have isolated the problem to the hard drive. No matter how many components I have plugged in the system will not power on if my HDD has the power connector plugged in. I dont even have any ide cables plugged in. Its as if the HDD is overloading the PSU to the point where it cant power on. Ive tried other hard drives and all is well. I even tried putting this HDD in another working system and the same thing happens.
Has anyone ever seen this? I wonder if one of the heads got stuck to a disk or something and the motor is shorting itself out. Basically I would like to know what could be happening and if there is any chance of getting the drive to spin up so I can retrieve some info off of it. Nothing is crucial, but I cant stand to throw away a HDD without knowing for sure that it is toast. Is there any kind of testing i can do? Maybe the freezer test?
Thanks
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