Hi - wonder if anyone can help. I have an Acer Travelmate laptop and a couple of weeks ago i decided to purchase a external Toshiba hard drive - 320gig to hold my growing music collection. This all worked well and i transferred all my mp3's over to the Toshiba without any problems. All ok so far and the laptop works fine - until i switch on the external drive - as soon as my machine detects it the laptop fan immediately comes on at an incredible speed - and won't go off again - even if i switch off the external drive. If i reboot all is back to normal again until i switch on the external and then the fan kicks in again. One of the reasons i purchased the Toshiba was due to the low noise - but the sound of my laptop fan is drowning out my music ! Any ideas how i can listen to my music in peace again ? would be grateful for any help

Welcome to the PCHF rocksounds.

Generally when a laptop fan spins up to full speed means that it's working harder and there's an overheating issue...

Is that Toshiba external hard drive powered by USB or does it plug into the wall as well?

many thanks for your reply. the external drive is plugged into the mains power as well. something else i forgot to mention - although i always run the laptop from mains power it will be fine like this then suddenly changes into battery mode - as if i've unplugged the mains cable. it will then run off the battery until it goes dead, unless i re-boot when it will be back on mains power again. i wonder if these problems are related ?

Ok, that's a fairly serious problem...

I'd suggest getting in touch with Acer and having them look at it...it appears to be a voltage issue with the power socket on the laptop and that is possibly causing the laptop to overheat when USB 2.0 is being used...which i have seen before.