Is My Laptop Permanently Dead?

[Starwind51]

   My laptop seems to be dead.

I recently bought an external hard drive directly from Toshiba, the maker of my main laptop.  I spoke with a sales support technician before deciding which hard drive to buy.  The laptop is about 7 years old.

The description of the external hard drive includes the following information:
 
Transfer your large media files at blazing fast speeds with USB 3.0
Backward compatible with USB 2.0

My laptop has USB 2.0 ports.  Every time I plugged the hard drive in I would get a message saying it had exceeded the power limit of the port.  At first I unplugged the hard drive right away, but seeing that nothing bad seemed to be happening when the hard drive was plugged in I started using it. 

I didn't make a backup of my laptop because I was in the middle of cleaning out programs and was searching out places on the laptop the program files were hidden or duplicated and didn't want to back up things I didn't want coming back onto the laptop.

I had previously tried having the hard drive in one port and a flash drive in another so I could transfer files directly from the flash to the external hard drive.

Today I put in the flash first, let it open, then put in the hard drive.  After transferring files I turned off the flash and put in a different flash.  I forgot to turn off the external hard drive first.  I walked away while the flash was opening.  When I came back I saw that the laptop was off.  It was so off the power light that indicates the laptop is drawing ac power was off.  The laptop was cool to the touch so I tried pressing the power button.  There's almost no battery power left, but if the laptop was simply unplugged it would still turn on and stay on for about 20 minutes before giving me a message to switch to ac power.  There was no response to the power button.

Do you think my laptop is well and truly dead?

If not, what would be involved in bringing it back to life?

Needless to say, all kinds of information that I use daily and is very important to me are on the laptop.  I've already explained why, whether it makes sense or not, I didn't back them up.  Among the files on the laptop is a file that is key to every secure aspect of my life.  On other occasions when I took the laptop for repair I removed this file.  If I have to leave the laptop with a technician who likes to poke around customers' files this information is readily accessible.  Oh sh*t.

 





   

[Raptor]

Most laptops don't last very long, 7 years is actually quite a long life for a modern laptop.
The whole external drive issue seems unrelated to me, despite the Windows warning.

Have you tried removing the battery? What type of Toshiba laptop was it?
Did the external drive you use come with its own power source or was it a 2.5" hard drive casing?

Your files are most likely safe, the laptop hard drive can be easily removed and data copied from it through the use of a PATA(IDE) to USB converter. Just take ESD precautions in mind before removing the hard drive or let someone with an ESD-free workstation do it.

[Starwind51]

Thanks.  I took the battery out and put it back in.  It's fine, thank you. 

                                                                          Ummm.... I think I'll go do a back up now.




The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A60.  The external hard drive is a Canvio 3.0, powered through the laptop.  And yes, I'm sending this message from that laptop.  Thanks again.

[Raptor]