Vista - External USB hard drives

My barebones computer pre-installed with Vista Home Premium had only one
IDE port which now has the DVD burner and one HD attached. No secondary.
So I bought a couple of USB external enclosers, but I have not been able
to get them to be recognized by Vista, although they show up in the BIOS.
The included drivers on the CD say Windows 98!
Is there a trick I am missing to get Vista to recognize those drives?
No, I am not going to reformat those drives to do it. I want to copy off
all my old files.

"Anthony Marsh" <anthony_marsh@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:AZGdnc2ovM2jPZDbnZ2dnUVZ_oavnZ2d@comcast.com...
> My barebones computer pre-installed with Vista Home Premium had only one
> IDE port which now has the DVD burner and one HD attached. No secondary.
> So I bought a couple of USB external enclosers, but I have not been able
> to get them to be recognized by Vista, although they show up in the BIOS.
> The included drivers on the CD say Windows 98!
> Is there a trick I am missing to get Vista to recognize those drives?
> No, I am not going to reformat those drives to do it. I want to copy off
> all my old files.

Just to clarify: You took old internal drives and put them in external
enclosures, connected by a USB port, correct?
What kind of drives were they? SATA, IDE, etc?
I don't have an answer for you, but with more clarity about the devices, I'm
sure someone can help.

I assume you've tried "install new hardware"? What about going to the
website of the company that makes the enclosures?
Do you have any workable computers with XP on it? You might be able to get
the drives to work there, which may be a step toward getting them to work on
Vista.

If these were internal drives or even new drives and the jumpers are set to
Master and Slave, you'll need to change the jumpers to Cable Select (CS) for
the external USB enclosure to work.



"DP" <nospam@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:eq49VqycHHA.4836@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...
>
> "Anthony Marsh" <anthony_marsh@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:AZGdnc2ovM2jPZDbnZ2dnUVZ_oavnZ2d@comcast.com...
>> My barebones computer pre-installed with Vista Home Premium had only one
>> IDE port which now has the DVD burner and one HD attached. No secondary.
>> So I bought a couple of USB external enclosers, but I have not been able
>> to get them to be recognized by Vista, although they show up in the BIOS.
>> The included drivers on the CD say Windows 98!
>> Is there a trick I am missing to get Vista to recognize those drives?
>> No, I am not going to reformat those drives to do it. I want to copy off
>> all my old files.
>
> Just to clarify: You took old internal drives and put them in external
> enclosures, connected by a USB port, correct?
> What kind of drives were they? SATA, IDE, etc?
> I don't have an answer for you, but with more clarity about the devices,
> I'm sure someone can help.
>
> I assume you've tried "install new hardware"? What about going to the
> website of the company that makes the enclosures?
> Do you have any workable computers with XP on it? You might be able to get
> the drives to work there, which may be a step toward getting them to work
> on Vista.

DP wrote:
>
> "Anthony Marsh" <anthony_marsh@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:AZGdnc2ovM2jPZDbnZ2dnUVZ_oavnZ2d@comcast.com...
>> My barebones computer pre-installed with Vista Home Premium had only
>> one IDE port which now has the DVD burner and one HD attached. No
>> secondary.
>> So I bought a couple of USB external enclosers, but I have not been
>> able to get them to be recognized by Vista, although they show up in
>> the BIOS.
>> The included drivers on the CD say Windows 98!
>> Is there a trick I am missing to get Vista to recognize those drives?
>> No, I am not going to reformat those drives to do it. I want to copy
>> off all my old files.
>
> Just to clarify: You took old internal drives and put them in external
> enclosures, connected by a USB port, correct?
> What kind of drives were they? SATA, IDE, etc?
> I don't have an answer for you, but with more clarity about the devices,
> I'm sure someone can help.
>
> I assume you've tried "install new hardware"? What about going to the
> website of the company that makes the enclosures?
> Do you have any workable computers with XP on it? You might be able to
> get the drives to work there, which may be a step toward getting them to
> work on Vista.

Thanks. These are old internal IDE HDDs.
I will try Cable Select first. The manual said to set it as Master.