"William R. Walsh" m
wrote in message news:896%c.121969$9d6.83666@attbi_s54...
Hi!

Hypothetical situation: There was a voltage spike on the +12. Many
drives
use this and it could kill them.

Depending on the exact failure, the drive could still be reported as dead,
either by itself or the BIOS or the OP


Not usually for the controllers and circuitry. It's usually only the
spindle
actuator and head movement assembly (voice coil or stepper motor in old
designs) that use the +12V.

What's it used for on the motherboard?
Mostly the RS-232 which many people would never even miss if you stole
it
from their computers.

Quite a bit more than that, actually.

It's available to all the slots on the bus, and I know that some Ethernet
cards use it to power their "media side". At the very least most
motherboards seem to require that it be present in order to power up.
Modems
also might require it to be present.

The OP might not have gotten that far to determine if these were working
before panicking.


The situation was simply proposed as a possible explanation of a
hypothetical situation in which someone would report that the drive(s) died
and the motherboard was okay.

Norm