External HardDrive Malfunction - Installing Internally?

[taliesin42]

I've come to trust the wise advice from everyone here more than anything else, so I really wanted to double check something and see if there were any other work-arounds, or if this sounds like an applicable solution.

My external hard drive (ROCK 250GB) recently began having trouble being recognized by my computer - it would start up, but an occasional *click* would be heard when it attempted to read the external harddrive and it wouldn't become accessable within 'My Computer' on my Desktop PC until it had been on for about 20 minutes and I attempted to re-boot the External HD.

However, I just got a new desktop and backed up my old one onto this external HD (the only one I have) - and now it's not being recognized AT ALL, nor even making the quiet 'click' of attempting to read itself. I heard many suggestions about simply taking it out of its casing to be sure it wasn't a power or cable connection problem, and if that didn't work, that I could install it internally in my new PC as a Secondary HardDrive. That way, it should be accessable within 'My Computer' as another HardDrive letter, using the following documentation found at: http://support.dell.com/support/edoc...es.htm#1103012

The Desktop PC is a Dell Dimension 8300, with Windows XP installed. After following those directions above from the website, do I need to be aware of or be concerned about anything else? Such as the possibility of the PC attempting to boot-up using the secondary HD and, finding no Operating System on it, damage my computer at all? Do I need to worry about this possibly frying out or damaging my main HardDrive of my Dimension PC? Is there any other advice that I should follow or words of warning to heed? I don't have the money to take it in to a 'Professional Information Recovery Expert', but I've got some extremely important pictures and documents on that external HardDrive, and I'm looking for any solution for data recovery possible.

Thanks again for any and all advice, I appreciate your time and consideration, as always!

[Murf]

Read the documentation and you need to jumper the "BAD DRIVE" as Cable Select and install per instructions. then the computer will not look at it to boot. No you will not damage anything, if the drive is going bad or is bad it just may not be recognized.