Vista - help configuring SATA USB hard drive

My 2 year old toshiba laptop died and I removed the HD and got a USB encolsure for it and have tried to connect it to my new laptop.

VIsta recognizes it as a USB mass storage device, but it won't assign it a drive letter or appear in the computer panel.

What gives??

"CSreality" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
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Do you have instructions with it? Any mention of initializing, partitioning
and formatting?


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I don't have anything from toshiba anymore and the instructions that came with the USB enclosure are only a 3 step outline in poor english that ends with plug the USB cable into your computer. It came with a driver disk for windows 98, but I bought it from Fry's and it has a Vista compatible sticker on it.

What would be typical initialization instructions? I don't want to format the drive because I have a lot of data I want to move off of it onto my new machine.

Hey CSreality,
I don't really understand why you do not just get a new HD for the lappy?? if that is all that is broken.
An external drive is not an ideal solution and I suspect that the drive that you are planning to use does not have an adequate cooler which would mean it would be working at very high temperatures which would shorten its life drasticaly!

Forget what I've written !! should learn to read first

Attempt two.
Are you sure that this drive is ok? when you say your old lappy died was this maybe the problem!!
Have you tried to error check the disk when it is attatched to the new lappy?? it could be possible that you can still get something from it

It was the DC connector pin on the mother board that stopped working. I had enough battery life left to know that the HD still works.

I need to get my data off of it and don't want to pay a recovery service or anything...

Ok,
when it is connected you are unable to open the drive have you tried checking it?

Check in disk manager, and see if the computer sees the drive. If it does,
you can right click on it and then assign a drive letter. "Computer" will
not see it till it has one. Did you leave the original operating system and
data on the disk. If not, you can format it. Disks in enclosures are
usually used intermittently, and so heat is not much of a problem. But, if
the enclosure does not have an external power supply, it may be demanding
too much from your usb ports. Try not to plug it into front ports. Disks and
scanners are pretty sensitive to location, and front ports are often split
off a single usb port. Good for flash drives and such, but not disks and
scanners. Of course there are exceptions, but check it all out.

Good luck.
"CSreality" <guest@xxxxxx-email.com> wrote in message
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