USB External Hard Drive Reading Error

I recently got a seagate ata notebook hard drive, and am using it in a usb hard drive enclosure with my laptop, vista basic 32bit. Whenever I plug it into the computer, I can see the 'safely remove hardware' icon on the taskbar, and i can view its hardware properties in the safely remove hardware window, but otherwise my computer does not read the hard drive. For instance, if I have it plugged in and I open 'my computer', the window freezes and I do not see the hard drive. If I were to unplug the hard drive while still in the same window, the window would unfreeze and I would see the hard drive for a second, then it would disappear.

Also:
-The hard drive works fine on my computer that runs in windows XP
-I have tried other solutions where I delete DRVINDEX.DAT, INFPUB.DAT, INFSTOR.DAT, INFSTRNG.DAT, INFCACHE.*,SETUPAPI.*
-I have also tried restarting the computer with it plugged in; the computer stays on the loading screen before the password login for about 30 minutes, then may turn on (but I will be able to use the hard drive!)
-I have tried using each USB port
-Once in a blue moon, when I plug it in I will see an icon in the taskbar that says 'your USB device can run faster' and tells me to plug it into a high speed port highlighted in bold, each being empty (i think they're all high speed ports). Upon which, I can use the hard drive and it takes a minute to load
-I can't see the hard drive in administrative properties/memory management
-All of my drivers are up to date
-I can also use the hard drive after running chkdsk /f, although it takes about 30 minutes as well

Thanks; any help is appreciated.

I am just unable to figure out the problem as far as i know Vista has the feature of plug and play USB port but cant get ehy it is not working for you. Do you try google for the solution.