So I installed the 10.4.4 (maxxuss patched) ISO that was posted on newsgroups - the one that installs the additional package "We stole it, suckers" or whatever...

The install flew by (did it through VMWare) and I decided to reboot to finish setting up the system so I wouldn't have to go through and do all the kext-caching crap.

Well, the system would POST and then it would stop in its tracks when it was getting ready to switch over to boot mode... So it would run through, detect the drives and everything, then just sit there like it was waiting for something. It wasn't like it hard-locked (Ctrl-Alt-Del still rebooted the system and I could push delete and it would say entering setup but then it would sit there and won't go anywhere) but its really confusing. This was a perfectly good hard drive, never had any issues with it before (go Maxtor) whatsoever, but now the system will POST but not boot when its attached. I hope I didn't just fry a 200GB HD. I'm thinking that if I could somehow hook it up after POST (like right before the OS starts, push the Pause/Break key to keep it from going further), I could regain access to the drive and use Acronis on it to fix it. Any ideas? I have never done something like that before and I'd rather not shock myself or blow the motherboard/hard drive. I figured I'd post this here since I'd like real information on the matter, not just guessing that ends up wherever it ends up.

Electrical connection of an IDE interface "live" represents a number of threats. Modern electronics are made to be hardened against these threats, but still are quite vulnerable.

1) Electrostatic discharge. Often, when you have 2 separate units that do not share the same logic ground suddenly connected together, you create an electrostatic discharge from the unit with greater potential to the unit with lesser potential. Since electrostatic discharge is much like miniature lightning, it actually can fry components on both sides of the connection. You do not necessarily hear a "snap" or smell ozone when this happens. If you do, chances are very significant something just fried.

2) Power surge. Sudden establishment of both power sinking and power sourcing elements sometimes activate during a moment of voltage hysteresis when a peripheral is suddenly connected. Most all circuits have a "crazy time" during which a RESET signal is usually built-in or asserted to stabilize operation. Plugging in a drive live can circumvent this necessary reset, leaving the interface in a confused if not inoperable state.

Why can you plug and unplug USB then? It's designed for that use in mind. First off, circuits may not draw more than 100ma from the USB interface. This significantly reduces damage potential from the get-go. Also, the shielding (static discharge/ potential equalizing) part of the USB interface comes together first before the electronic communications signals can. Unless you can really jab a USB plug home in a split second, there's almost zero danger from ESD. Lastly, the connections of USB almost definitely are using opto-isolators or similar protective circuitry. This may explain why it took a while for high speed USB 2.0 to come about; opto-isolators can only switch so fast.

Thanks for the reply. I was afraid of that. I'm going to try to stick it in an old box I have and see if it will pass POST. I've never heard of a hard drive locking up the boot process once POST passes before. Any ideas as to what happened? I can't see that the hard drive failed on me, that just doesn't make logical sense to me, considering that its never even had a single bad sector, and its not a Western Digital

Where Electrostatic Discharge enters an equation, logic exits. It's like trying to puzzle just exactly why lightning struck this tree instead of that.

Controller state may have gotten jumbled by the confusing signals it heard during reconnection - from an input circuit's standpoint, the 2,000,000,000 nanoseconds it took to hook the drive up each had their own peculiar ups and downs, all very confusing to any circuit or state machine. It likely went through many illegal or impossible states - and most programmers don't code for failure cases that "never happen."

No, I don't think you understand. I never reconnected the hard drive, it ceased functioning after installing 10.4.4 - the BIOS would POST but would go no further after detecting the drives. Shutting the computer off and disconnecting the drive allowed it to boot up and run fine. I'm going to contact Maxtor about getting a replacement drive.

You might want to try getting a cheap USB or firewire drive enclosure and see if it works in that. If it doesn't then you should be able to get a replacment from Maxtor, I think their drive warranties are quite good.

Maybe this is a dumb suggestion... but have you considered maybe you dont have a bootloader on that drive? I know if I boot to my pata drive, it sits there with a flashing cursor and does nothing else... that's normal