IDE cable color change?

[CXGJarrod]

Anyone ever have a IDE cable change color? Just looked into a server here at work today that was having problems and saw that the outside of the IDE cable was a lot darker than usual. I switched out the cable and I am still having some issues, but I am going to run some utilities on the drive to see what might be up.

IDE Cable went from the normal grey-white color to a dark tan color.

[nihil]

Yes, on kit that had fried

Check the connectors to see if they show signs of discolouration. It may be the cable shorting.........any discolouration in any of the other cables or on the case?.

Better check all the fans and vents whilst you are at it, but I suspect a short. That may well have damaged the drive and/or MoBo

Good Luck

[CXGJarrod]

Originally posted here by nihil
Yes, on kit that had fried

Check the connectors to see if they show signs of discolouration. It may be the cable shorting.........any discolouration in any of the other cables or on the case?.

Better check all the fans and vents whilst you are at it, but I suspect a short. That may well have damaged the drive and/or MoBo

Good Luck

Its one of our DNS servers and I am starting to think this is going to be a long night... No other signs of discolouration on the other IDE cable in the system and it has a decent (Antec) powersupply in it. I will check around for shorts and get back to you. The hard drive seems to be working ok with the new cable, but Windows 2k Server will not boot all the way in. The other HD in the system has backup of the system state and I am thinking that wiping the drive and reinstalling on a new drive might be the best. Who knows what might happen to that drive in the future.

[nihil]

I think that the HDD may have been damaged, I certainly wouldn't trust it anymore. The problem would be if there is any damage at the MoBo end?

I am guessing, but it sounds as if you are running a RAID1 array?

Good Luck Mate!

[CXGJarrod]

Originally posted here by nihil
I think that the HDD may have been damaged, I certainly wouldn't trust it anymore. The problem would be if there is any damage at the MoBo end?

I am guessing, but it sounds as if you are running a RAID1 array?

Good Luck Mate!

No RAID in this server. However, the MB seems to be ok otherwise. (No burn marks or discoloration on the board) Its been on in the BIOS screen for over an hour and its ok. We just bought another drive at the local Staples and we are going to try it.

[nihil]

Sounds like you might have caught the problem in time. Let us know how you get on.

Cheers

[CXGJarrod]

Update on this: Put the new hard drive in the machine. (as well as a new IDE cable) Installed 2k Server. Then installed SP4. Reboot and it wont load into Windows. It gets to the blue background and hangs. No mouse, no keyboard and CTRL ALT Delete does not work. You have to hard reboot. It will load partially into safe mode but it seems like there might be more damage than I orginally thought. Also, the keyboard and mouse (that worked all the way through the installation of 2k) are not working when it loads into windows. Weird. It might be time to make an emergency call to get a new server.

[|3lack|ce]

Kinda late in the game to post this, but yes, fried cable is usually the case - but there's another instance of yellowing too -

Nicotene. Tell your user to quit smoking around his box.

[nihil]

Sorry to hear that mate, I was afraid that the MoBo would have taken some damage as well. Unfortunately when you get a short you usually get damage at both ends.

[CXGJarrod]

Well the boss just gave the ok for a new server. We will use a testing server for now (with a reformat) for the main server. I just hope it didnt fry the expensive tape drive in that machine. It didnt get the second hard drive or the CDROM (both work perfect) so we will see...