Okay, I left my PC on last night downloading something via BT.  I came this morning, and it was hung at the point in startup where it searches for my HDs.  (before POST).

I restarted the PC, and it got to the same point and hung again.  Also, the HD LED was continually lit.  Not on/off, just lit.

I left the house, came back several hours later, and the PC started up okay.  I'm typing from it right now.

I'm about to transfer some vital stuff to my laptop via the network, but I'd like ideas on what exactly happened.

If the HD crashed, it should've stayed frozen at my Windows desktop, no?  That's happened to me before.  The only reason it would restart (AFAIK) is if we had a brownout that killed the machine.  It will always start up again after a brown out.

Is it possible it overheated?  The smaller fan on my mobo usually needs a push start to get going, and I haven't been doing that.

Now, I have two drives.  When the problem was happening, it didn't detect either.  It'd be weird for both of them to fail, and I didn't hear any clicking/grinding at all.  Is it possible the fault was just w/ my mobo, and was maybe just overheating?

Right now, I've got the side of the case off and a fan blowing on it.

As I understand it, it'd be better to keep the PC running than to turn it off again, right?  Because there's more shock/chance for trouble in the shutdown/startup procedure than there is in just keeping the HD going...

Anyway, opinions please.  I'm not sure what to do.

I had a problem with my old pc where I would boot it up, it would get past the bios, then all that would happen was a black screen. Eventually it would start up completly after restarting a few times.. I never did fix the problem, hence why I got a new laptop to replace it..

Yeah...  Well that doesn't help me, but thanks for sharing.

So do you think the HD is failing?  Like I said, it didn't detect either (even if the main one was bad, wouldn't it detect the second one and then give a 'No OS' error?), and I didn't hear any clicking at all.

Could a heat lockup/brownout be the cause of it?  I'd much rather my mobo fail than my HDs.

Back everything up anyhow just in case.. maybe a power outage caused the problem. Hard to say.. thats one reason I hated leaving my pc on at night time.. never know what happens heh.

Unfortunately, I don't have another large empty HD.  I've got 15gigs free on my laptop that I'm filling up now, and I guess I'll start on DVD-Rs soon.  Then again, I'm going on the assumption that it's just my main HD that's failing (maybe).  I haven't even thought about backing up my secondary one.  (280 gigs total!)

EDIT:  Tell me this.  Should I leave it running now?

Any ideas of what I need to backup.  I've got my emails already, and most of my documents... Right now I'm backing up my pictures of Asian women... I think I'm panicking, because that doesn't make much sense. lol

LOL, well, get your school work for sure.. anything irreplaceble. (pictures from digital camera.. etc)

Could be nothing.. could be something. If its running now, maybe you should keep it running, till someone says other wise.. (I dont realy know..)

But I wouldnt suggest leaving it alone, prob best to turn it off if you leave the room.

See, I don't know...  IIRC, from what I've always heard, if you get a HD that might possibly be failing running, don't ever shut it down... It might never startup again.  Gah.

I'm burning all my photos to DVD right now.

All my MP3s should be safe on my Gigabeat...  I'm going to backup my work and personal project files that are on my 2nd HD.

Yeah, I'm not so sure either.. best wait for an expert then =P

I had similar symptoms with a PC at work - HD light stayed on, unit would either hang or not startup properly, but it did work *sometimes* and then would work for a while.

Ultimately, it was a bad capacitor problem (when I opened it up one of the caps was visibly swollen).  It was a Dell and still under warranty, so I just had them replace the mobo.

I don't see any damage to the mobo...

Like I said, I never heard any clicking or grinding from the HDs, and when I feel them, they're not hot or 'humming' strangely...  If it were your PC, how much would you trust the HDs?