Having trouble with a USB auxiliary harddrive

Ok.. I have 2 PCs. A newer one that had windows vista.. and an older one with XP.

The Vista machine wouldn't boot up. So I got an adapter that allows you to attach the Vista hardrive to the XP machine as a USB device. I want to do this to tyr to save the files on the Vista drive.

So I have it attached right now. The XP machine recognized a USB mass storage device on startup. But I can't find the drive or files anywhere.. I read somewhere to check disk manager but didn't see it there either. I did see it in "computer managment" under disk drives.. but couldn't seem to access it.

A couple possbilities I have read..

-I had an Ipod shuffle attached to the XP computer. I read somewhere this might cause a problem. But I don't know how to dfix it if that is the case.

-will the XP machine read the files from the Vista hardrive?

- do I have to put jumpers on the Vista drive I attached to make it a slave?

Did you check disk management and input it as a foriegn drive?

and input it as a foriegn drive?

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No.. I don't think so. I haven't seen this terminology.

But when I look under disk managment I only see the main internal harddrive. And there are a bunch of drives there related to ports for media readers but they are all empty.. no drive space.

Above I think I said I saw it under Disk Manager but I think I see it in "device manager" in that area where the disk manager is located.

Log in as administrator to add a drive to Vista.

I am trying to add a drive to my Xp machine though. Is that necessary in XP? Plus, I should be on the adminstrator account.

I am guessing you are going by my designation for my account.. that is the PC that won't boot up so I am using a backup to try to save the files from ym Vista machine.

I guess I should be in the XP forum..

No. I have my Vista x64 Ultimate, XP x64 SP2, and Linux workstations on my home network. Make sure file and print sharing are in the firewall on each box. You want them allowed on the firewall.

The thing is though.. there is only one box.

I took the harddrive out of the Vista machine because that one won't boot up.

One thing I notice though is that when I look at the properties of the USB drive it says "location 0".. isn't that the same location as "C", the main drive? Maybe this means I need to put one of those jumpers on the USB drive to make it a slave?

I have connected USB drives to my workstation with no problem.

OK, I tried this drive on another computer with XP.. a newer version of XP I belive.. and it worked. Also, the newer computer has a USB 2 port and the older one doesn't I don't think. Could this be why the older XP machine isn't working, because the harddrive needs a USB2 port? Or could it just be a driver issue? I found a post that described how to change your USB drivers but I am nervous about trying that.