Laptop HDs/Enclosure

[nipcracka]

My friend's laptop crapped out. Can't get it to boot up. There were rare occasions when it would, but the computer would black out after a few minutes. He needs the data off the hard drive & bought an HDD enclosure hoping we could transfer it to a desktop. When we plug it in windows doesn't recognize it. You can hear the hard drive spinning in the enclosure. Is the hard drive itself just messed up or am I missing something?

 

[Potade]

Operating System? If you're running XP it shouldn't be a problem. Otherwise, did the enclosure come with a driver disk?

 

[nipcracka]

Tried it with 3 computers. 2 running XP, 1 running 2000.

 

[corkyg]

Make sure it is getting enough power - best run from powered USB hub. I have several, and no drivers are needed with XP. If all that fails, then try a simple IDE 3.5 to 2.5 adapter and connect it as a secondary Master in the main 'puter. Then, if nothing happens - it would seem that the drive might be kaput. Have you run the Hitachi/IBM DFT (bootable disk) on it?