Trouble using laptop 2.5" HDD as external storage with a desktop PC

[dm7rjf1]

Hi Everyone.

Unfortunately my laptop died recently however I have good reason to believe that the hard drive is still ok. There are some photos and music on it which I would like to recover.

I bought a Dynamode 2.5" SATA/IDE Enclosure from PC World and have connected this to my desktop PC via the USB connector supplied with the enclosure. The enclosure is USB powered. The laptop HDD is a WD Scorpio Blue 250GB. The desktop runs on XP whereas the laptop ran on Vista.

I cannot get my desktop PC to see the HDD. I'm sure it is plugged in correctly and the lights come on on the enclosure so it is getting power. I have installed the drivers and software from the CD Rom which came with the enclosure but none seems to have helped. Unfortunately there were no instructions with it.

Please could somebody help?

Thanks in advance!
Rich

 

[gguerra]

Your enclosure gets power but does you hard drive? You can place you ear next to the hard drive to hear if it is spinning.. There are also 2.5" to 3.5" adapters which are specifically made so that you can connect a laptop hard drive to your desktop. When your computer does not "see" a hard drive it can be
1. no power to the drive
2. no interface to the drive
3. the hard drive is dead.
4. in your case the enclosure could be malfunctioning (unlikely but possible)