On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:34:22 +0100, "Keith W"
<invalidaddress@invalidaddress.invalid> wrote:

>
>"Allen" <allent@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
>news:v4mdndALw6Wc2xrVnZ2dnUVZ_uWdnZ2d@giganews.co m...
>>I have four hard drives (3 old, one new); the three old ones, all
>>formatted NTFS, had worked OK in my previous XP system. The XP box went
>>down in flames and, as time was critical, I had to replace it with an
>>off-the-shelf VISTA machine. I can get only one of these drives to be
>>recognized in either of two USB enclosures (one is an old house brand
>>CompUSA box, the other is a new AcomData box). I have tried with backside
>>USB ports, frontside ports and two different USB expansion devices and
>>VISTA will only recognize one of the old ones and doesn't see the new one,
>>which hasn't been formatted yet. One of the oldies is an 80 gig Seagate;
>>the others are all Maxtor of 200, 250 and 500 gig. If anyone has any
>>suggestions, please, oh please, pass them on. I will be eternally grateful.
>
>
>Most external USB boxes require the drive to be jumpered as a Slave.

I must have only had odd ones then, most if not all I've had
needed the drive jumpered as master.

If it is only the smallest drive that is working, I would
wonder if the controller can't support the higher capacity
drives and just as a temporary test, I'd put the (typically
a feature of semi-modern HDDs) 32GB capacity limiting jumper
on the drive just to see if it then works - which would then
tend to confirm it was too large a capacity.

However, the info that the old box "went down in flames" is
a bit vague, some kinds of problems like a power surge or
PSU failure could potentially have damaged a drive(s). The
surest bet is connecting them to another known compatible
(desktop) windows system over it's integral hard drive
controller instead of any of these external USB boxes, then
if there is any luck, copy off the data and/or run the HDD
manufacturer's diagnostics on them.