Hard drive won't power up

Here's another picture of two hard drives:

http://zone.ni.com/cms/images/devzon...%20Desktop.png

The one on the left (3.5") is one you would find in a desktop PC (or a
tower, if it stands upright). The one on the right (2.5") is one you
would find in a laptop.

If I read the advice correctly, you were advised to remove the hard
drive from the laptop (Shenan believed there was something wrong with it
and figured you might as well save the data before it's too late) and
place it inside an external case like this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817182145

But Shenan may have reached this conclusion (that your hard drive was
dying) based on your statement (using the incorrect terminolgy) "I
pushed the power button on the hard drive it turned itself off after a
minute." You later indicated you meant the laptop and not the hard
drive!

This statement:

"Saturday when I pushed the power button it would shut off as soon as my
finger left the button. I could hear the fan turn on and off."

.... indicates a hardware problem to me. And if you don't want to lose
the stuff on your computer, you should certainly follow Shenan's advice
(of find someone competent who can do that for you).

You say you have the laptop connected to an external hard drive. But
this won't help you if you can't run the laptop (if your immediate goal
is to save all your important data).

Then again, if you had been using a good backup strategy (you never did
tell us if you did or didn't), then all your data would be on that
external hard drive. But based on your worried statement, I doubt this
is the case. :-(


jemster wrote:
Thanks Daave I needed that! :-) Also I was advised to get a case for
my external hard drive to use it with my laptop. Why do I need a case?


"Daave" wrote in message
...
Ah. :-)

This is what a hard drive looks like:

http://rjmcomputersboise.files.wordp.../hardrive2.jpg

(opened up)
http://learnthat.com/files/2010/03/hard-drive.jpg

If your PC (personal computer) is a desktop, you can probably call
it a tower. :-)

The hard drive, by the way, contains data (operating system,
programs, and all your many files like documents, photos, etc.).


jemster wrote:
Power button on the computer. Sorry, I thought it was called the
hard drive-the tower or whatever.


"thecreator" wrote in message
...
Hi Joni,

Power Button on the computer or Power Button on the External
Hard Drive are you talking about?

How old is the computer in question?


--
thecreator



"jemster" wrote in message
...
I have a Gateway desktop (Win XP Home w/sp3 IE 7) and lately it
has been slowing down painfully slow despite running Avira
anti-virus, Spybot,, PConPoint, doing disk cleanup, defrag, etc.
Last Thursday I turned on the monitor and when I pushed the power
button on the hard drive it turned itself off after a minute so I
kept doing it and each time it would load a little further before
it shut off. It finally stayed on until I finished with email and
shut it down. Friday went thru the same thing praying all the
time it would let me do a system restore. I was able to do that to
a week prior .and thought it would be ok...ha...doing my own
thinking again. Saturday when I pushed the power button it would
shut off as soon as my finger left the button. I could hear the
fan turn on and off. I have so much
stuff on that computer that I sure don't want to lose...oh I also
have had a
external hard drive connected to it. What do I do/try now?
Thanks
Joni