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There was a power outage in my home for approx 30 seconds. I have a laptop with one external hd. Immediately afterwards, there was no issue with the computer. Everything worked fine. Somewhere between 30 mins -1 hour later, I started to copy a file between external and a usb flash drive.

The computer froze, and on rebooting, it kept freezing. My comp is configured so that everything but base windows files are on the external. So program files, data, etc. on the external. So when the computer was freezing, I checked the external and the HDD activity light was blinking. Turned off the external and computer can get into windows fine. Of course, I can't run most of my progs and access data, but the point is laptop is good.

Initially I checked to see if a reboot worked. Nope. If I turned the external on, the activity light would start blinking and windows would freeze. Actually the freezing is because everything except for moving the mouse pointer depends on partitions on the hd. So shell context menus, my computer, the windows theme, etc...

Anyway, I dug out a old copy of Knoppix and tried to mount the partitions. Didn't work. The computer detected the presence of the hd, but it couldn't mount the partitions. No error message, just waiting on the hd to actually do something. Which it doesn't.

I also tried hooking up the external to a small desktop in my house. The desktop detects the hd, but it doesn't pick up the partitions.

I tried using TestDisk (it's on Knoppix) to look for bad partitions. But it doesn't pick up the hd, like it's not even connected.

I don't have a spare enclosure nor do I have any open internal IDE slots. Is there anything else you can point me to, before I starting looking at things that cost me money?

EDIT: I should mention one more thing. The HDD activity light has gone out. Initially, when trying to access the partitions, the light was there. But after a while, it went out. No blue light for HD activity, but the disk still spins (and freezes my windows).