Hard drive questions..

[Brand]

Alright, a couple of queries for those of you who might know a thing or two about hard drives, in this case a laptop hard drive.

My laptop kicked the bucket sometime between Thursday morning and Friday evening; I don't know the specific cause, I just know it worked when I turned it off Thursday morning, and when I tried turning it on last night, nada.  I'm not asking about possible causes of the sudden not-working, as the laptop was in bad shape even when it came to me, so I've been expecting it to kick at some point.

A friend I know who does some (strictly unprofessional) work on computers, including a couple of laptops, opines that the problem probably isn't in the HDD, but rather something else I don't care so much about, and that the HDD may still be viable.  If so, I'm considering removing it and buying an enclosure to turn it into an external USB-connected drive.  These are examples of the enclosures I'm talking about.

My queries are, has anyone else around here ever used an enclosure of this sort?  Did it work well, or at least decently?  And finally, since my own experience with external drives is limited, would the fact that a full operating system (WinXP Home, if it matters) would already be installed on the drive cause any problems with connecting it to another PC or even cause it to not work properly as an external drive?

[Ansuru]

Well, my laptop died while on vacation about 6 weeks ago, so I've got my mind on similar issues. Rather than haul the entire thing along for a 14 hour airborne sojourn, I just pulled the hard drive.

Laptop hard drives are freaky little things...you'd need a special adapter to connect it to something designed for a standard desktop drive. I just got back, so I'm looking for one myself...it'll be one final test to see if I'm right that the problem was the drive breaking down, or if something finally wiggled loose on that Compaq POS motherboard. I hope the drive works...got some image files I want to save on it :P Not many...I'm good about backing up, 'specially before trips...but enough :P

[DracoAlutusVulpes]

First of all, what is the problem you are having? the exact problem, cuz it could still be due to a bad hdd. Second of all, there are laptop HDD specefic enclosures. I use one myself and love it. I got an old 12gb hdd in one, and cuz it's about the size of a palm piolet i can carry it in my pocket, and due to the fact thats it's so small, it only is powred by usb. So you can use it like a jump-drive. Something like this look for hdd bays for 2.5 in hard drives. and i won't tell you were to buy them, but 'cuz i work at compusa, i will support them and say go there :D

[Brand]

First of all, what is the problem you are having? the exact problem, cuz it could still be due to a bad hdd. Second of all, there are laptop HDD specefic enclosures. I use one myself and love it. I got an old 12gb hdd in one, and cuz it's about the size of a palm piolet i can carry it in my pocket, and due to the fact thats it's so small, it only is powred by usb. So you can use it like a jump-drive. Something like this look for hdd bays for 2.5 in hard drives. and i won't tell you were to buy them, but 'cuz i work at compusa, i will support them and say go there :D

We don't have any CompUSAs near me, actually, otherwise I'd probably go look there. ^^; As it is I'll most likely either get one at the computer repair shop we use or through TigerDirect.  But it's good to hear that someone uses and likes the whole enclosure deal.  Gives me hope. ^^ And I figured it'd be a 2.5" drive, I couldn't really see anything else fitting into a laptop. xD But I'll check to make sure once I have the HDD itself out, no impulse buying.

And my specific problem is that, the laptop simply won't turn on.  I really can't say more than that. o.o; When it's plugged in, the battery light still comes on, even indicates if the battery is or isn't fully charged, but pushing the power button (just once quick, or holding it down, or pressing at angles, I've tried any way of pushing it I can think of) just doesn't turn the computer on.

[Ansuru]

That sounds like a motherboard problem to me. You have power, so it's probably not the PSU, and if it was the hard drive, the mobo would still try to initialize itself. Lucky puck! :P

[Brand]

Sounds like I really may just be a relatively simple and inexpensive procedure away from having my data back, even if the laptop in general's wonked. ^^; Thanks for the input, Draco and Ansuru. <3 You guys rock.

[DracoAlutusVulpes]

That sounds like a motherboard problem to me. You have power, so it's probably not the PSU, and if it was the hard drive, the mobo would still try to initialize itself. Lucky puck! :P

I concur. Most likey is just the mobo.  

[timelord]

hold on everyone. it could be power supply. may be something between the battery and the motherboard seperated on either end. if there isn't any power, and the battery is fully charged then it is a problem between the 2 items. the power supply and the motherboard. you need to find out if either the circuits came loose from the motherboard or the power supply. and as far as external adapters for laptop computers go, i know nothing about them. i use removable hdd trays for my computer and i love them cuz i can switch hdd's and os's if i wish. and if you use an external adapter to take it to another pc having an os on the hdd shouldn't affect how everything operates so long as you don't have the bios configured to try and boot from that hdd.

[DracoAlutusVulpes]

Well either way, he's gunna be spending anywhere from 100 to over a 1000 dollars to get it repaired. and thats not including labor. And the hard drive bay is an easy 20 fix for now if he wants.

[Brand]

Thanks for your thoughts, Timelord. ^^

I went the cheap and easy route and just bought an external adapter for the HDD, and I'm deliriously happy to report, it works just fine, and the OS isn't causing any problems.  :lol:  The rest of the laptop I really couldn't care less about, I only used it because it was easy to carry around and as I mentioned before, I was really just playing the waiting game as to when it was gonna die.  It had been dropped several times and had a couple of gallons of water dumped on it (all quite accidentally) before it came to me, so I'm honestly kind of amazed the whole system lasted as long as it did.

Luckily the hard drive's fine, so I can move everything over from it and still have it as a backup/portable drive if necessary. ^^ I really appreciate everyone offering their opinions, thanks again guys!