Hardware experts desperately needed

[Asmodean]

This sound very much like a power supply problem. My first step would be to get a new power supply - then work on the disks.

My dad had a problem very much like yours, and after getting a new power supply, he could access his HDD easily. The file systems was damaged, though, so he had to have professionals repair it, so as not to lose data.

Asmodean

[Pekka]

Well, I'm leaning on getting a new power supply. Not because I can afford it, but because I can't afford losing more devices if this would be the problem.

UR, no, I don't use even the 4 IDE devices at the same time. I did for a while maybe a year ago and the puter jammed totally, and wouldn't boot up AT ALL, unless I would take out all the cords and cables, take out all the IDE devices, then booting it once with nothing attached, because it would give me a failure in the mobo, and then I would plug it all back, except only 3 devices, then it would work. WIth 4? No. Besides, now I have only 2 devices, usually 2 HDDs, but sometimes one HDD and one DVD-R or so.

[Cruddy]

Originally posted by Pekka
Well, I'm leaning on getting a new power supply. Not because I can afford it, but because I can't afford losing more devices if this would be the problem.

You can never have an overpowerful PSU - but you certainly can have an underpowered PSU.

Originally posted by Pekka
UR, no, I don't use even the 4 IDE devices at the same time. I did for a while maybe a year ago and the puter jammed totally, and wouldn't boot up AT ALL, unless I would take out all the cords and cables, take out all the IDE devices, then booting it once with nothing attached, because it would give me a failure in the mobo, and then I would plug it all back, except only 3 devices, then it would work. WIth 4? No. Besides, now I have only 2 devices, usually 2 HDDs, but sometimes one HDD and one DVD-R or so.

Perhaps you had the Master/Slave switches set up wrong? Perhaps 2 hard drives were trying to boot at once?

If you don't want it to happen again matey... BACKUP YOUR FILES!

How cheap is a blank DVD-R/CD-R these days? Hmm?