My old desktop pc i took out the harddisk as i want to use for external storage on my new laptop. 40gb seagate

Question

My old desktop pc i took out the harddisk as i want to use for external storage on my new laptop. 40gb seagate 3.5 inch.
i put the harddisk in the external casing and connect it to my new laptop via USB.My laptop is unable to detect the harddisk and i am unable to format the hdd.

Answer 1

are you sure all the connections inside your external case are snug? first i would try reconnecting everything. and make sure you jumpered it to master, although with seagate drives your external kit should detect it with cable select or slave settings.

second, does your laptop make the "usb connect" noise when you plug it in? if so it probably is detecting the hard drive, but you aren't getting a drive letter which can be caused my multiple reasons. i would go to control panel, then administrative tools, then computer management. on the left side click on disk management. on the right side you should see your C: drive and cd rom drives, do you see a extra hard drive with an unknown file system? or listed as no partition? this would be your 40gb.

programs like norton goback add a drive overlay to the hard disk, effectively making it impossible to read the partition from another computer unless it also has goback on it. the easiest way around this is to plug the 40gb back into your desktop and uninstall goback. then you can take the hd and plug it back into the usb kit and read it just fine.

if it doesn't even detect in disk management than your external kit may be bad, or the power adapter for it, or even the hard drive died while you were working with it.

Answer 2

Go to TigerDirect.com. They have little cases (HD Enclosures) that go right over your HD and give it a USB or FireWire interface, and sometimes have fans to keep it cool also. They're very cheap, good-looking, and TigerDirect is good and reliable company.

I.E. Any of these would work!!

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1204&

Answer 3

Try it on another PC to see if the problem is with the hard rive or with your laptop.

This will help you isolate the possible causes.

regards,
Philip T