Windows 7: Cannot read old hard drive from usb

I've just installed a new hard drive and installed windows and when I try to connect my old one via a usb enclosure it won't read the main partition. It reads the recovery partition fine but when accessing the main partition it keeps asking me whether I want to format the drive or not and shows up to have 0 bytes out of 0 bytes. (obviously I'm not going to format it) I know the drive is still working and not corrupted as when I replace it back into my laptop it works fine again. The drive is a 500GB sata 2 if that helpsAnybody any ideas on how I can read it? I don't understand how it can read the recovery partition but not the main one.

Hello.


See if the HDD/partition shows up in diskpart from an elevated command window type the following commands followed by <enter> after each and be sure to post back with any further questions you may have and to keep us informed.

diskpart

list disk # # your disk #

list partition #

All 3 partitions showing up
Partition 1 OEM 100mb
Partition 2 Primary 14gb
Partition 3 Primary 451gb

also checked disk management and all 3 are shown there too. But why does it want me to reformat the 3rd on windows explorer?

Just out of curiosity, post a snip of Windows disk management.

How to Upload and Post a Screenshot and File in Seven Forums

Here

If there is a Windows install there have you tried booting the HDD in the BIOS at startup?

There's no windows installation files on if that's what you mean but I have tried booting it up just to run windows by usb and it still won't work. I have another usb enclosure and it doesn't seem to work in that one either. It still works if its plugged directly into my laptop though. I'm wondering if maybe there's some driver or software that I need to install for it or if its somehow locked to only being able to read from inside my laptop. (don't know if that's possible) The bios certainly doesn't have any lock on it. And then the only other thing I can think of is that both the usb enclosures aren't good enough to run it but they should as it said up to 750GB on them when I bought them.

That's a possibility, at least you have a way to access the data.

Have you looked in Windows Device Manager to see if there's anything there?

yea it shows as usb mass storage device. Tried reinstalling and updating the drivers but still no luck. Might have to look into buying a more expensive enclosure.