Hellow everyone! I'm new on this forum and need your valuable help. I have a Seagate ATA 500GB hard drive for data backup which is hooked to PC via enternal enclosure. Couple of days ago, when I tried another Seagate ATA 160GB drive installed with OS XP on a newly purchased hard drive docking station, the drive failed (still fails up to now) to spin on the docking station. Then I try 500GB drive on that dock station and same thing happens. Then I try both drives on external enclosure, 160GB drive spins and 500GB drive does not. Same thing happens when IDE cable is unpluged, 160Gb drive spins and 50GB drive doesn't. The Vista does not detect 160GB drive as it spins. My questions: what could be wrong with 500GB drive fails spinning on the external enclosure and Vista does not detect 160GB drive. Thanks very much.

Try keeping it off for a while maybe 1 hour? And see if it'll spin.

Drives have to be designated via jumpers on the back of the HD to signal CMOS which one the controller is. It depends on your configuration. If both drives (for example) where on the same IDE cable then you should have your boot drive as a master and your other one as a slave. If they are on IDE0 then they are the primary master/slave. If they are on IDE1 then they are secondary master/slave. However, if you have one on each (using the ends of each IDE cable) then they can both be designated as masters (making one primary master and the other secondary master). CD-ROMs are another factor but they are viewed as block devices just like hard drives. It doesn't always work to use the cable select jumper setting but that is also an option to try. If you have a drive set by itself in a docking station and it is designated as a slave it will not be recognized. If you have two drives designated as master on the same IDE channel then only one or none will be recognized. There are a lot of factors to consider (unfortunately). John W. Borelli IT Specialist OmniIT borelli35

Exactly, check the jumpers setting on your hard disk, cable properly connected etc. i've noted that you said no spinning vibration detected too, so you might want to either check the power cables try switching it with other devices' power cable etc. A new helpful user