IDE hard drive enclosure question?

Question

ok, i had an old IBM ide hard drive laying around, and i thought i should make the most of it
i bought a 3.5" ide enclosure, everything fit, and connected
but once I plugged it into my PC, I cant find it or see it

help???
-vista home premium 32-bit


thx in advance

Answer 1

1st thing you have to do is go to computer management by right mouse clicking on my computer and clicking manage. OR go to the control panel and find it in administrative tools.



in there you will see disk management. when you have your USB enclosure plugged in you SHOULD see a additional drive on the left hand side even if the volume is corrupt/deleted or whatever. if your confused while you have that screen open unplug and plug in that drive..you should see a change.



if you do not, its either the drive, the bay, or more likely...a jumper setting on the drive. ..the IDE drive needs to be in either cable select, master, or if it is a western digital drive it MIGHT need to be set in a "stand alone" mode. most would say to just always choose cable select, but i tend to only choose master or stand alone if it applies.

refer to the sticker on the HD for jumper instructions.

Answer 2

I always have alot of problems with those enclosures, they are a complete waste. If you want to make use of the old hard drive, just stick it in your computer and use it as a back up drive.

Answer 3

you have to assign a drive letter to the hard drive. this will allow you to access it to store data on it, as if it were a flash drive or portable hard drive. it has been awhile since I last did it but it should go as follows.

1. go to your control panel through the start button.

2. go to administrative tools.

3. go to computer management.

4. you should be able to see another drive now ( other than your C: drive)

right click the drive and select assign drive letter. anything E or higher will work fine. only use E or higher because anything lower is already pre-assigned.

Answer 4

check your IDE hard drive jumper setting located in the hard drive sticker, set the jumper to MASTER or SLAVE, if still not detected, try to insert the USb to another usb port or swap the usb cable, if still nothing happens there are possibilities that your hard drive is broken or your external drive.



it doesnt matter if you are using Vista/XP