Hard Drive Failures--Hard Drive Enclosure Failure

[counselor815]

Recently, my desktop computer crashed (or so I thought). I was running Win2000 professional. In an effort to retrieve my important files off my hard drive-- I went out and purchased a Hard drive enclosure. This allowed me to connect my hard drive to my laptop to gain access to my files. This enclosure worked great for a couple of months. Then all of a sudden it stopped working. I couldnt get access to my hard drive anymore. The drive would not even power up anymore. The enclosure itself would power up if it were not connected to the hard drive, but the power light would immediately shut off when I connect the hard drive to it. I did take the enclosure back to the store and exchanged it for a new one. But, I got the same results. I connected the hard drive to the enclosures connections and the power (or power light) would not come on, but as soon as I disconnected the hard drive the power immediately came on.

I cannot even begin to figure out what is going on---since initially the enclosure proved to be the answer to my problems. I recently purchased a new desktop and can now transfer the files from the old hard drive to my new system (running Windows XP).

Can anyone tell me what could possibly be happening with the hard drive or the hard drive enclosure. Now I just want my files off this drive.. What are the chances of that happening.

[Snurfen]

welcome to CTH, counselor

I'd strongly suspect hard drive total failure.
Two ways of checking what is going on here:
1) Try putting that suspect drive in a pc as a slave drive (for the purpose of this test, you could even try it in place of your cd/dvd drive
2) Try a known working drive in the external enclosure.

When you know what is going on, you can make a decision on your next step from here.

[counselor815]

How do I know if this is the hard drive or the enclosure? How can this be? The same thing happened with another hard drive. I had 2 hard drives in one computer. I purchased 2 totally different hard drive enclosures, from 2 different company's and locations-- because I had the 2 hard drives. I would like to re-emphasize both these items initially worked. They stopped working suddenly.. Neither one of these enclosures are working...What would cause this?