Replacing motherboard - RAID 1 drives not found

[CorkVDH]

On a PC I built for my wife 18 months ago, both the motherboard (ASUS A8N-E nForce 4 Ultra) and the power supply (Antec SmartPower 500) died. I was running a pair of SATA hard drives in RAID 1 configuration when the system failed.

I ordered a similar new motherboard from NewEgg, a Foxconn WinFast NF4UK8AA (also nForce 4 Ultra), but it's not recognizing the RAID 1 hard drives. The system just doesn't see the drives. I've tried disconnecting one, but still no joy. Any thoughts? TIA, Cork

 

[I]

At what point is what not recognizing the drives?

Is the POST enumeration screen and/or the RAID bios setup screen both not seeing them? If they aren't, it seems the dead psu killed the drives as well as the mobo. If that is the case, you might get lucky if you can find another HDD with same PCB revision and swap the PCBs.

However, you wrote that you disconned one... how about disconnecting the other one instead? Are you trying to run these as an array on a raid controller still? That should not be necessary, I would next take both drives and individually hook one or the other up to another system just to double-check this, as they should be seen fine as independent volumes on a non-raid controller. Even though the odds are against it, there is a very remote chance the new board has a firmware or hardware problem and the drives are ok.

Just one last thought - is it possible you have them jumpered wrong or are they SATA? Also if they're SATA, double-check the cable and connectors just in case either is flaky.

 

[CorkVDH]

Thanks for the response!

Neither drive is being recognized on POST, nor in the BIOS screens. I've put new SATA power cables in, switched the order of the data cables, and tried each SATA drive alone.

You may be right: they might both be fried. Is the next step to take one drive to another operational PC and see if it shows up?

 

[CorkVDH]

Well, I took each drive to my own PC, used a new SATA data cable and a new power cable, and neither drive showed up. I think they are both dead. Next step will be to buy two new hard drives and see if someone can replace the drive controller on one of these Samsung 250's to get the data off for me.

I will never buy another Antec PSU.