external hard drive died want to try it as internal.

i just had an external hard drive die and i know, usually, the first to go is the circuit board in them so i took the drive out to see if it would work in my pc and either the drive is telling the pc it wants to boot from disc or vice versa but either way it won't let the pc start/boot up it's plugged in correct because i have a second working drive now i just unplugged that and put the drive in question there and sorry for not being very detailed i tried this a few weeks ago and don't remember the exact line it gave. the external is a maxtor one touch 3 500gb my system is xp pro service pack 3 intel celeron cpu 2.40ghz 224mb of ram.. Thanks for any input.

 

What exactly are you trying to achieve? Just retrieving data?
I think your saying your hopeing it's the external box that died and not the drive itself?
You say you removed your second working drive? So you still have your first (boot drive) installed and the HD you think died?

Easiest thing I can think of is install a working drive in the external case. If it works the other drive is dead and the external case is fine.