Hello, I asked about this a while ago. I have got a bit further with it, but am still having problems. I have a hard disk that has serious errors on it. When it is connected via IDE it doesn't show in windows. However I can get it to detect when it is put in a usb case. Windows detects it and the "remove hardware safely" icon shows in the taskbar. BUT the HD doesn't show in My computer or disk management. It does however show when in device manager as a USB device. The only options I have for it are to update drivers though and it doesn't need any. What I need to be able to do it get it to show in my computer so I can run scan disk on it to fix the errors.

"However I can get it to detect when it is put in a usb case." "BUT the HD doesn't show in My computer or disk management." It sounds like it's detecting the external drive enclosure's circuits as a mass storage device, but it is not recognizing the drive itself. ...... It is common to un-intentionally damage IDE data cables, especially while removing them - the 80 wire ones are more likely to be damaged. What usually happens is the cable is ripped at either edge and the wires there are either damaged or severed, often right at a connector or under it's cable clamp there, where it's hard to see - if a wire is severed but it's ends are touching, the connection is intermittant, rather than being reliable. Another common thing is for the data cable to be separated from the connector contacts a bit after you have removed a cable - there should be no gap between the data cable and the connector - if there is press the cable against the connector to eliminate the gap. 80 wire data cables are also easily damaged at either edge if the cable is sharply creased at a fold in the cable. Try another data cable if in doubt. ...... Sometimes when a hard drive is defective you can't access it at all, no matter what you do. The hard drive must be partitioned and formatted to something your operating system recognizes in order for it to show up in My Computer and Windows Explorer, but even if it isn't, your mboard bios must recognize it and hard disk diagnostic utilities must recognize it, and if they do, it should show up in Disk Management and Device Manager in XP. If those latter things can't recognize the drive there is nothing you can do, other than taking it to or sending it to a data recovery expert and having him try to recover data you don't want to lose, if you are willing to pay the bucks - most will not charge you if they can't recover anything, but usually they can.

Reinstall the drive internally, connecting both the data and power cables. Take care that the jumper on the drive is positioned correctly. Master/slave or cable select. Restart the computer and watch the start up screens. The drive should be properly identified by model and capacity. If that doesn't happen then check the BIOS settings to verify the controller you are connected to is enabled and the drive selections are all set to auto. Feel the side of the drive while under power. You should feel some motion. If the drive is spinning then check the jumper and cable.

Thanks for the answers guys. "Tubesandwires" You are probably correct. Windows is probably detecting the enclosure and not the HD. "OtheHill" Trust me, I have spent hours trying the drive with different cables/computers/jumper settings. When connected internally, it is detected in the BIOS of the computer I am using it in. I have run a bootup diagnostic program on it and it got 2% through in 48 hours, so it would have taken another 100 days to complete the check let-a-lone fix the drive. I wanted to run scan disk on it in windows. One note is that I did get it to show up with content on it in my computer a few months ago when it first broke. However when I tried to view some of the data it "stopped responding" and I haven't been able to do it again.

If it is detected in the BIOS there may be hope. You may be using the wrong type of diagnostic. Download a drive fitness utility for that brand and run it. You could also try a live version of Linux on it if you have files to recover. Knoppix is a good one that can read NTFS files. There can be numerous reasons why Windows isn't seeing the drive.

I've tried the brand's diag tools and it didn't solve anywhere -seagate. It just says there are errors. They are not fixed. I can't install anything on it because it throws up errors.

Did you use SeaTools for DOS? Did you read the “Learn more and the tutorial”? Look at the link below to do that if you didn’t before. http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/su...