Originally Posted by c5pilot

It seems you have a lot going on at one time. My suggestion would be to concentrate on one job at a time. If you think your HD failed, solve that first. Then load XP. Then try to get your water cooling setup. There's nothing worse than having one problem compound another. It makes it difficult to troubleshoot etc. Otherwise you may need more than one head of hair.

Also, try to post a list of things you've done and then a list of things you plan to do next. It will make it easier for people to give you sound advice for the stage you're working on at the time. Someone may see problems down the road and warn you ahead of time.

Some drive help: If the drive is on it's last legs and you need to try to transfer files off of it but it won't post, you can try freezing it. Stick it in a freezer bag, seal it tightly, and stick it in the freezer for 10 minutes or so. This MAY allow it to post but it may also fail again right away so make sure you have a good drive installed with enough room for the data, you may only get 1 shot. I've done this a few times, it does work. I wouldn't do this for a drive that DOES post, it can render a drive useless just as easily.

If the problem is intermittent, you may be able to just gently tap the drive or slowly rotate it as it's posting. I used these methods many years ago when I was a computer tech and was known as a miracle worker. At that point I could sell the people the most expensive parts in the store because I just saved their precious data.

My absolute best advice for EVERYONE is ALWAYS buy 2 identical drives at the same time. Often it's the circuit board that fails, not the actual drive. If one fails, you simply remove the PCB from the good drive and put it on the bad one. If it works, transfer the data to another good drive. If you can find another identical drive keep in mind the PCB revision numbers may be different and might not work when mounted on the other drive. I'd say, if you had the drives a couple of years and one fails, just replace them both with another pair.

I hope all this helps someone.