Need some help with a hard drive

[CameronJ]

OK so this all started last week when a maxtor 3200 external hard drive died on me. i was reading up on how it is usually just the usb chip in the back of the hard drive that fails and that you can take it all apart,plug in the hard drive into an ide cable and install it into your computer. After taking apart the external housing and finding a spot in my new case for hard drive it seems that my computer will not startup if i have that hard drive plugged in. i can hear the power go to it and then it just stops. If i unplug my case ,turn the power suppy switch off and then disconnect that maxtor hard drive and try and power up the computer it works fine.

Is it something with the 4 prong power connecter in the back of the harddrive? do you think it could of been the problem with the hard drive from the begining? and is there anyway to replace/Fix that power connector?

Im not giving up on this harddrive just yet ! ! !

Thanks

[GDH]

Probably the best test you could do at this point in time is to plug the drive into an external usb case. They have their own power supply, and it takes the complication of being inside your PC out of the equation.

When you connect it and power up the usb case, can you hear the drive spin? any strange noises? If so, what happens when you plug the USB in?

[CameronJ]

I origionally took it out of the case because the usb card that was originally in it c****d out on me. So i decided to turn it into a internal HD. When it was external it worked for about 3 years and up until like 2 weeks ago i didn't have any problems with it. Then the power light flickered and the usb port was having problems and then it just never worked again even though the power light worked fine. No click or sounds besides the HD spinning quietly.