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  • Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.

    Post 16 Update

    Post 17 Warning

Sim drive crashed. IE: No power

O

OleBoy

Charter Member 2015
Last week I had a situation where my FSX drive stopped working. When I clicked on the shortcut for FSX all that happened was an error message. Something to the affect of it being invalid.
It worked fine the day prior. I changed the wires from the drive to the power supply, drive to the motherboard (including different sata ports) and still, the drive will not power up. (sigh)
The other drives work fine in any sata slot, and all the other available power connections on the power supply.
Further testing of the FSX drive led me to test it in another computer. As I thought, no power. Not recognized. (insert swear words here)

As another test I put the drive in a freezer bag and put it in the freezer over night. When I hooked it up in the morning, the same situation as mentioned above, no power.
I contacted Western Digital about the issue being as the drive is under warranty. I send it back, they replace it. Simple enough.

The part I'm frustrated with is that I have been working on a lot of repaints. Well (insert idiotic related comments here) my PSD templates were residing in the specific models folders for each particular model that I was working on.
Alright, lesson learned. All those templates are somewhat, gone. Not necessarily, but they may be unless I can figure out how to get power to the drive.
It's been suggested that I should send the drive to a hard drive doctor for a heart transplant. I'm not in a financial situation that allows this as I know it won't come cheap.

I'm hoping someone here might have a suggestion. Although under the circumstances I'm not very optimistic. I figure it has to be a resistor or dead short on the internal board.
Heck, I have no clue what it looks like inside that block of metal.
This is the drive. WD Caviar Black 1 TB SATA Hard Drives ( WD1001FALS)

Anything that could help for ideas are appreciated.
 
Ole Boy, Western Digital's replacement warranty is good, have used it myself. Unfortunately, like you, what I had on it was lost, gone, bye bye. If you know a GOOD electronics genius, he might be able to check the electronics on the drive to get power back to the motor, but don't count on it. In most cases, the boards are not repairable. Sometimes they can be exchanged, if you have another, identical drive, but even that is intensive work. Good luck.

Unfortunately, backup programs don't cover all types of setups, nowadays. Mine covers less than 30% of my setup, and like yours, any failure on mine will be devestating, even tho I have a good backup system. I just tend to save stuff outside it's perameters, like we all seem to do, more and more.
 
I have a friend who is an electronics tech I've considered calling. The whole situation revolves around getting a warranty replacement from WD. If the drive is opened, I write it off in hopes in can be fixed.
The question I ask, "Is it worth it?" Answer, hell no. :icon_lol:

I guess I'm just trying to eliminate all questionable solutions before sending it back.

Thanks for the comments, modelr. :salute:
 
Disk Doctors usually require a new identical piece as a donor for components, plus troubleshooting time and time to repair costs.
Been there. $275 to recover an old Seagate 500GB IDE backup drive which was $59.99 new.
Worse yet, all of the data wasn't recoverable, because of, what they called, head crashes causing bad sectors.

I had my primary storage drive fail a while back. Before I replaced it(spelled: Procrastinator), it's backup died too. I was sick over that one.

Will WD attempt a repair at reasonable cost, or is replacement their only option? Good Luck with whatever you decide...Don
 
I decided it was best sent back to WD for replacement. Live and learn. Paint templates were not worth investing the money in for salvage.
Cross shipped, a new drive should arrive Thursday.

Thanks to those who responded in my predicament.
 
The new drive arrived yesterday. After a grooling reinstallation process I am once again, back in the virtual skies :running:

Western Digital has my old drive. They are going to try to repair (recover) all my .PSD files for a fee of $75.00. I decided to gamble on the recovery.
 
I have had that happen a few times and when it does it makes ya sick to your stomach. I have a back up drive in my computer and also another back up drive that is external. Once a week I back up everything to the internal drive and once a month I back up everything to the external drive. So far this has worked fine for me.Only one time I had something go wrong and it trashed both back up and main drive. Ended up formatting both drives. Lucky for me I had the external back that stays unplugged from the pooter. All I had to do was reinstall windows and drop and drag all programs.
 
Well, what I did was attempt a re-install of the OS through the manufacturer's disks. Since I had my neat little backup I wasn't overly concerned, but then during the new image install I notice I was actually executing on my backup.

What a pain!

After doing an HDD recovery, I'm only now getting the Sim back up to speed, and it's been two weeks!

Of course I had to do my taxes too, so that took priority.

Lesson learned....disconnect the backup if you're going to touch the partition or image on the C:. Also, remember where you put your user keys for the payware (reloaded most of them by going to the web sites, then found the notebook after the fact).
 
I know exactly what you mean. I've been in similar situations. I, like you learned the hard way.
Basically there was nothing of real importance on this drive that can't be replaced by a reinstall. The thing is I was working on several projects where I saved the PSD files to the aircraft folders directly on the drive.
A bad move on my part not saving back-ups. I will make them now!! :icon_lol:

My only real reason for having WD try the PCB replacement is that I had a quite a bit of time invested in the layers for Tako Kichi's Navion.
I don't (won't do them again) want to even think about having to redo them. The price seemed reasonable. And if thry manage to fix it, I do get the PSD files back in a digital form. Or I can physically purchase the drive at a refurbished price. I decided to at least let them try.
 
So what I'm thinking of doing is configuring an Raid Array. I've not actually done it before, although I'm familiar with the technology. Not sure how much investment I'm willing to make.

Since we're talking about external loads for FSX, beyond the drive failure, how did that actually work out?

BTW, the other lesson I learned was not to keep all your software receipts in your Outlook PST file. That file can be recovered, but needs to be recovered twice, once from the drive, and once from inside Outlook, which really screws up it's file structure.
 
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