External Hard Drive

[Roadrunner_123]

Hello,
I have been using my 3.5" external hard drive backing-up my desktop. I was kinda curious what would happen if I used it to backup my old laptop, trying to experiment first before buying a 2.5" external hd which was my original plan.
The result: my laptop cpu temp reached 70 degrees C during the back-up process.Good I have installed one free program on CPU monitoring and it automatically shutdown the laptop.
But after that, my laptop has never been the same again, just as few as 3 minutes upon opening, the temperature soars to the max. I'm afraid I damaged the CPU because of using the wrong Type of external hd. Can someone help me on this, and what do I need to do next?
Thanks in advance.
Roadrunner

 

[evongugg]

Check the laptop's CPU fan and heatsink. If the heatsink is loose or broken, fix it and reapply thermal paste. If the fan is not spinning, replace it.

 

[evongugg]

You didn't cause this problem with your external HDD.

 

[gtvr]

Yeah, I'm just going to have to assume it's a USB connection? I can't see how they're related.

 

[Roadrunner_123]

I took evongugg's advice. After checking the fan ( it's working), I removed the heat sink, cleaned/took out the old thermal adhesive and re-applied new thermal paste. Now my temp is much lower and never been erratic as before .
Thanks for the help, I'm learning a lot from this forum.