HDD freezes

I have a WD5000AAKB IDE external drive (500 GB) in a rosewill external enclosure. This HDD is seen at BIOS when starting up but when it comes time to loading up Vista I get a black screen and it freezes. This is just before I am suppose to key in my password. Also when I have the computer on and then connect the HDD, the computer freezes (windows explorer) which forces me to reboot. I have also tried to place this HDD internally and at boot up it freezes as aforementioned.

Is it under warranty? Sounds like you can't even spin it up to run diagnostics. If someone has a USB docking station see if you get get them to put the drive in and access it in Explorer. If it's busted on the other guy's PC too then it's probably busted.

Turning it on you can hear it spin up but it doesn't seem to spin down. Is that normal?

I don't know what to tell you where it's one of those Blue drives. I only buy the WD "Black" type that spins up to the running RPM and stays there. The more complex the stuff the more stuff to break. I don't even run Sleep mode or Hibernation or any of that on my PCs. They are either running or shut down. No screen saver either.

But then I'm an Eclectician. Your mileage may vary.

Basically when doing diagnostics you want to make divisions to help isolate the problem. First one on PCs is hardware/software. If the drive messes up no matter which machine it's hooked up to, chance are high that it's hardware. If it only messes up on your PC then it might be software.. further testing will be required to narrow it down.