USB to ATA

[creative-2008]

I've been trying to attach two old 60Gb Maxtor hard drives to my laptop in order to get some of the data from it. I purchased an IDE/SATA to USB cable, which I have been assured will do the job.

I have used this cable successfully to get data from a SATA hard drive, but have not been successful with either of the ATA drives. The cable provides a connector for ATA drives, so because of this and the advice I have been given I am working under the assumption that the cable is fit for this purpose.

When I first attached either of the hard drives Windows went through the usual detecting new hardware etc., and the hard drive is listed in the Device Manager. The drive is also listed in Disk Management, however it is not assigned a letter and the option to Change Drive Letter and Paths is greyed out.

I've tried restarting the laptop numerous times, unplugging and reattaching the hard drive, and even booting Windows with the hard drive attached. Does anyone have suggestions as to what I should do next?

I'm running Windows XP SP3, although I don't think I have all of the latest patches installed. Any feedback will be greatly appreciated, and I will do my best to answer any questions.

Thanks.

 

[palmboy5]

First thing is to make sure the ATA drives have their jumpers set to Master/Single, but it sounds to me like the two drives have a format that windows can't read.. What were the drives last used for? What does Disk Management say about the drive's partitions in the lower section of the window? (NTFS, FAT32, and RAW are example things that it could say)

 

[creative-2008]

I've double-checked one of the drives, and the jumper is definitely set to Master. I've even tried the jumper every way round that it will go.

The drives were both last used as the the hard drives in machines running Windows ME and XP, although I couldn't say for sure which was which.

I've made some screenshots of the Disk Management console, although I can't see anything out of the ordinary.