Hard drive won't power up

[jemster]

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

 

[Shenan Stanley]

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?

Not a software issue. The drive is probably dying - replace it. You may be
able to get the data off it by having the drive put in an external case or
it may work long enough if not the primary drive internally for you to copy
stuff off it.

However - in any case - how's that backup plan you have in place?

 

[jemster]

Bear with me....I only know enough to be dangerous. What do you mean put it
in an external case? I thought the external drive I have now would have
retrievable data on it??????

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Bear with me....I only know enough to be dangerous. What do you
mean put it in an external case? I thought the external drive I
have now would have retrievable data on it??????

Answering your later question first...

Your external drive will only have the data on it you put there. If you did
not copy anything over there (manually or through some backup process you
instigated) then it won't have anything and it will only be as good as the
last time you backed up (either manually or through some process you helped
setup.)

So you have - in the last question - jumped to the last question I asked:
"how's that backup plan you have in place?"

What was your backup plan?
How was it implemented?
Was there some automated process backing up your entire system?
Just certain folders?

What you can get from the external drive (just by connecting it to another
computer and looking if it is just a normal external drive and your backup
method was a basic copy/paste) is determined by how you backed up/how
frequent. Just having it hooked up does nothing for you. ;-)


As for your first question, the hard disk drive in your current external
case and the one in your computer are likely of the same type. Just in
different boxes getting their power and connecting to things in a different
way in the end. You can buy external hard disk drive cases or even just
conversion cables that can change the hard drive from an internal drive to
one that connects to a system using USB. ;-)

 

[thecreator]

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?

 

[jemster]

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

 

[jemster]

I'm sure there was a time when you didn't know what you know now. I'm sure
there are also things I know that you don't.
I think I do pretty well for a 66 year od bat!!!

 

[Daave]

Ah.

This is what a hard drive looks like:

http://rjmcomputersboise.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/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.).

 

[Daave]

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

Sounds like you may need to replace the power supply.

Since this is clearly a hardware issue, this page might help:

http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Hardware_Tshoot

Also cross-posting to:
microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware

 

[jemster]

Wow, what a bunch of good info...I need to see if I can hook this laptop to
my printer. Thanks a bunch Daave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[jemster]

I was able to boot up long enough to transfer data to the external hard
drive....YEA!!!! Praying and swear words DO help!
I also ordered a power supply to try first.
Bless yer little pea-pickin' heart Daave...you've been a lot of help!!