mac freezing issues

today i turned on my mac mini 1gb ram to find that everytime i turned it on it frooze.Its only 6 weeks old this mac and i was kacking myself!i reset pram,dmu reinstalled leopard, ran disk utility etc. NOTHING WORKED! however as i write this (20 mins later)after unplugging the external harddrive its been running smooth as ever.so im wondering if he external harddrive has something on it causing the problem??sems that it was causing my beachball problems if you like!oh and btw im a bit scared to plug the external harddrive backi in is it safe to see if it freezes again with it in??

what format is that external in

you can always try and plug it in, but launch disk utility first and be ready to run some repairs on it (assuming its HFS+)

yeah i think ill try it as theres well over 200 gigs of stuff on it that isnt all mine s its kinda important !!aswell as my time machine back ups and what not!!ill post here to let u know what happens