[PLUG] [OT] Hardware Question

Alan alan at clueserver.org
Sat Aug 6 02:33:42 UTC 2005


On Thu, 2005-08-04 at 19:45 -0700, Rich Shepard wrote:
>    Why might a change in motherboard chipsets require the hard drive to be
> reformatted? In all the years I've built my own hardware (starting in 1984)
> I've not heard this before, and I've moved disks from system to system.
> 
>    The context for this question arises from the sudden death of my server's
> power supply this afternoon. No warning. I cannot say that it was getting
> progressively louder over time, it always seemed loud to me. First time it
> was fatally afflicted.
> 
>    So, off I drove to ENU to buy a replacement power supply; an Antec 'cause
> they're good quality and relatively quite quiet.
> 
>    When I put the new drive in the box and turned on the power, the system
> told me, "No CPU fan. Should I shut down now? (Y/N)". Of course, I said yes.
> Checked all the wires and saw nothing wrong. After going through this a few
> times I pulled the box forward and watched: sure enough the fan was spinning
> merrily away. After the POST the beeping and message went away.
> 
>    I called ENU and was told that the motherboard was obviously not toast, but
> something must have been upset when the powersupply went. The fellow on their
> end of the conversation asked me which board and chipset I had; they have
> another MSI board with a similar chip set, but not the same. He told me it
> was important because one "usually has to reformat the hard drive if the chip
> sets are different."

They are feeding you a load of crap.  The hard drive should not even be
accessed at the point where you are getting that message.

If there is a problem with ide drives being read differently, it is a
different message.  (Errors of sectors not ending on the correct
boundaries or some such.) 

Sounds like the cpu heat sensors got fried in a power surge.  Replacing
the motherboard is the only fix I know for that.  (Or you can run
without the sensors and hope that the fan fails open and not closed.)

> 
>    A bunch of you are hardware gurus so I'd like your opinion of both the
> statement that a different chip set could require a hard drive reformat
> (apparently this is more of a Microsoft issue, but even so ...) and whether
> the report of no CPU fan is a transient event about which I should not worry.
> Candidly, if I don't have to strip the box and swap system boards I'd prefer
> to save the time and money. However, if that's the prudent thing to do I'll
> do it this weekend.
> 
>    What sayith y'all?
> 
> Rich
> 




More information about the PLUG mailing list