Testing failed drives to see why they failed?

[valve90210]

I recently got hold of an HP N40L server and set it up to run Open Media Vault.

I got it all set up using a 250GB drive that came with the server and all seemed well for a few days then I noticed lots of errors and eventually it wouldn't boot up.

I figured it was probably a dead drive so I set up the server using an old laptop drive I had spare. I knew the drive wasn't the best and had a hard life in the laptop of a teenage niece but I figured it would do for a bit of testing.

After a few days this also died on me and wouldn't boot, in fact it was no longer even recognised as a device and the server wouldn't try t boot as there was no boot drive.

I've just gotten hold of a couple of 250gb drives and intend to use one for the server but before I do so, I'd like to test the old drives to check what caused them to die on me but I'm not really sure how to go about this, or what to test/look for, can anyone give me any pointers please?

I probably won't get a chance tp do anything until the weekend but if there's anything I can be reading up on in the meantime that would be great.

Thanks

 

[KIA]

Not detected by the BIOS?

Drill the platters if it has important data on it then throw it away.