Broken External HDD

[Megazero]

So I have an Acer Aspire Easystore D110 1.5TB External HDD, and I have been using it for quite some time (around 3 years I suppose?) when today somehow it die on me, so I try to take it out and put her in as an internal HDD



but then I realized that I dont have any spare SATA cable around, so I take out the sata and power cable of my internal HDD and plug it in to the broken HDD, but when I do that and turn on my computer, it stuck at the windows screen (the one with black screen and the shinning the logo of Win7, with the logo keep shinning and have it own animation even though it stuck there), when I take the broken HDD out and dont plug in back the current internal HDD, the windows start fine with only the SSD(with the OS inside) plug in (somehow the CD/DVD Read/Writer dont work as well when the internal HDD isnt plug in). So here's my question:

 

1.Any idea what's wrong with my external HDD?

2.Do external HDD that usually connected by USB like that have some kind of files in it that make it only able to run like an USB and cant run as an internal HDD? (meaning I have to format it before I can use it as internal HDD, provided if it's dont have any problem and the problem is with the other stuff and not the HDD itself?)

[Megazero]

Bump! Any answer?

[ictdude1]

it could be the drive its self is bad....get something called a 3.5'' sata hdd enclosure. this allows you to plug in any 3.5'' desktop hard drive through the usb and use it as an external hard drive

[FMA]

ive had a similiar problem with every external hardrive ive bought. usually replacing the enclosure and reformatting it breaths new life into it but not for long.

[LogicalDrm]

One reason that it won't boot into windows with internal HDD plugged off is that the internal HDD contains programs/files needed to load windows. Other reason could be mobo's sata controller being just annoying. BIOS update could fix it but I'm not sure. I had similiar problem with IDE/SATA system.