External SATA drive not recognised as harddrive

Hi,

I bought a SATA drive and seperate external enclosure, but I've been unable to get XP to recognise as a drive. The enclosure is USB 2, into my USB 1 port. When connected I get the "safely remove hardware" icon, but no recognition of a drive in My Computer, Computer Managementc. I've tried it with an ATA drive, the enclosure works fine, and I've tried the SATA drive in another PC, again no problems. Partition Magic won't start up, saying I have a "Bad Partition Table"(!) The only things I can think of are

1. I have no SATA on my laptop and
2. it might be a dodgy SATA cable (although I think that's unlikely)

Any suggestions? I am at a complete loss as to what to do! Thanks in advance!!

I`m thinking you might need a PCMCIA card like this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16815108109 but not necessarily that particular one.

Thanks for the tip, but is not possible to connect up a SATA drive without needing to buy an additional card? Shouldn't the data interpretation etc be taken care of by my external box in a "plug and play" stylee?