Eraser just killed my harddisk, then my pc stopped booting

Troubleduser

New Member
Hi,

very unhappy about this, looking for help now.

I was overwriting unused disk space on one of my harddisks. Then I got the error "eraser stopped working". I closed the program, but the harddisk continued making noises as if it was still writing. So I restarted... to my horror it was still making those noises. To say one good thing, it was only a backup harddisk.

However:

Then I switched the pc off and began to unplug harddisks to see which one it actually was, cause I have several in. I unplugged only one.

Now what happened next is: I switched the pc on and got nothing on the screen, fans just keep going on full power but nothing happens.

Do you have any idea what causes this and how I can fix it?

My Windows drive is actually on another SSD... so did my motherboard take damage from this? Ugh..
 
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I think it's also possible that my graphics card died just during this incident, will try to exchange it in a bit or tomorrow.
 
Ok, I tried a diff. graphics card, changed the RAM slots, plugged out all harddisks, nothing is happening. Seems my mainboard is broken after the harddisk failure. o_O or does anyone have another idea?
 
Okay, seems nobody cares to say anything. Then let just tell you that this is the gayest piece of software ever used. Only good thing it did was remind me to make about 5 backups of everything and never use Eraser again - well and it did erase my harddisk after all. Guess I should be glad it didn't erase me along with it.
 
First, I would like to apologize for your loss. Hardware failure is never fun for anyone. That being said Eraser cannot directly kill a hard drive, or motherboard. It's simply not possible for Eraser alone to damage hardware.
 
First, I would like to apologize for your loss. Hardware failure is never fun for anyone. That being said Eraser cannot directly kill a hard drive, or motherboard. It's simply not possible for Eraser alone to damage hardware.

Thanks for your reply.
Of course it can't, I guess unfortunately my harddrive had just reached the end of its lifespan during that 3x overwriting period.
Meanwhile I think I have identified the problem: The PSU doesn't seem to give constant voltage (according to motherboard LED, works fine with new PSU), and it seems the mainboard died along with it. So .. kinda solved I guess.
 
Hopefully it was just the power supply that failed and did not cause a cascade onto the motherboard or any other hardware! I had a suspicion it was the power supply or motherboard considering your description of the problem, but wasn't sure, could have been the CPU too. Cheapest thing to swap is the PSU and it seems like that's fixed it for ya though :)
 
In this scenario eraser just manifested a hardware issue either the drive has bad blocks or it overheated because the fan is not working correctly.
 
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