Vista - No Drive letter for USB HDD - HELP PLEASE

Hi,
Old XP computer failed to boot. As it had been slowing down and was over 6 years old, I purchased a new computer with Vista OS. I removed Samsung SP160N HDD from old computer; connected everything via USB, drivers were found and the USB HDD was detected as Drive letter 'J', but when I tried to access I got a message that the 'File or Directory is corrupted or unreadible'. Disconnected by using Safely Remove Hardware.
Then,thinking I had been a ripe banana, realised I had not set the HDD as slave.
So set as slave by removing the cover on first pins. Connected HDD to mains via adaper and connected to computer via USB on front of computer. HDD seems to power up, but in 'Computer' the USB connected HDD is now not shown; there is no drive letter. I accessed 'Computer Management'. The HDD is shown as 'Disk 1' unknown, not initialised. It does not show any other info and no drive letter.
Have I done something wrong? I really would like to access this old HDD, whilst most items were backed up, there are a couple of files I really would like to copy to my new computer.
Much appreciate any help / advice.

The partition might be corrupt. That was what happened to the drive
that was attached to my old machine. It had RAM problems (or something
corrupting memory). That killed the contents of my USB drive.
-------
Will Pittenger
[will 6 8 at mtco dot com] (preferred e-mail address)
Or use [will dot pittenger 1 at gmail dot com]

ToadHall wrote:

"ToadHall" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
news:ecc2d58376619829b23a6a1273e32b21@xxxxxx-gateway.com...If you are using a USB adapter or case to put your IDE drive in then the
drive needs to be set as Master. If the 32 GB Clip was used on your old
computer it must remain on the USB configuration. Do not use the Cable
Select setting. As for the data "corruption" hopefully someone will be able
to help you recover the data. It may be that the drive has failed and won't
be recoverable at all by non-professional means.