My computer will not recognize my hard drive

[DtadaC99]

Ok, so I am attempting to extract files my friends hard drive. I can not use her computer because only one usb port works for some reason. So my first thought was I will just throw the hard drive into my computer because I have an ide connector to hook it up. Well once I did that my computer would no longer boot up. I went to the BIOS and deselected the drive from attempting to boot and I noticed that no matter what changes i made this hard drive became my primary drive because of the ide connection. So instead of messing with my BIOS even more i decided to go and buy an external closure for this hard drive. I plugged it in and the drivers for the hard drive installed but i could not access the drive anywhere. The drive comes up in my device manager, so therefor i know the computer sees it, but the drive does not pop up in 'My Computer' or disk management. I know the external closure works properly because i used another internal hard drive in five minutes before. The hard drive I am having problems with is a Samsung SP0802N, there is a jumper in there but i have not touched that yet. Also I am running windows 7 64 bit.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[LookinAround]

In Device Manager are you seeing BOTH 1) USB Mass Storage driver under USB AND 2) a disk driver under Disks?

Open Disk Management, watch the lower pane as you plug in/remove the USB cable. Do you see a physical disk appear/disappear?

Usually, if jumper matters, it should be set to Master
http://www.xpcgear.com/hddcaseinstall.html

 

[DtadaC99]

Ok, i do see both the USB mass storage device under the usb devices and i see Samsung usb device under the disk drives in device manage. Nothing pops up in disk management when i plug/unplug the usb cord from my computer.

 

[LookinAround]

Ok, i do see both the USB mass storage device under the usb devices and i see Samsung usb device under the disk drives in device manage. Nothing pops up in disk management when i plug/unplug the usb cord from my computer.

No disk showing up in lower pane of Disk Management?

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You can try See if this might help [post=875300]How to Cleanup and Remove old USB Storage Drivers[/post] and then PC Inspector data recovery to see if it detects the drive. Click their Help tab for the 4 steps "to do"


p.s. did you also check the jumper is set to Master?

 

[DtadaC99]

Okay, so i did what you said by removing all the usb devices and reinstalling, but now when i plug my device back in, it fails to install the drivers.

 

[LookinAround]

are you hearing the device connect ding-dong when you connect to the USB port?

Does your enclosure have its own AC adapter?
Do you have a self-powered hub you could try using? (a USB hub with its own AC adapter)

 

[LookinAround]

In fact, you'll find much of it listed for you here See [post=720762]Troubleshoot: Windows Won't Recognize Your USB Hard Drive[/post]

if you aren't even hearing the device connect ding-dong, you have a problem of the hardware itself not being detefcted. I'd try on other computer and try a self-powered hub in case it's a not enough power issue... Once the hardware is at least detected, i'd try one of the data recovery tools as it will tell you if it can find the physical disk as well as detect your data on it

is a very odd problem