How to use my old hard drive if old computer is dead

Greetings.

I recently purchased a refurbished computer after my previous died on me. Nothing was wrong with the old hard drive, though, so I took it out and put it into an enclosure.

I'm trying to access that hard drive with my new computer but when I plug it into the USB port nothing happens. Power is going into the hard drive and the light is on, but the new computer simply isn't recognizing that anything is plugged in.

I tried to find some kind of program on the new computer that can do the transfer, but the Easy Transfer thing can only work if I set it up on the old computer first.

How do I get the new computer to recognize the old computer's hard drive?

Windows 7 Ultimate is installed on both hard drives, but I think the new one is 64-bit while the old one is 32-bit. They are both part of the HP Pavilion series, but slightly different models. And, uh... I can't think of any more relevant information.

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I think the answer might be here:

I'm trying to access that hard drive with my new computer but when I plug it into the USB port nothing happens. Power is going into the hard drive and the light is on, but the new computer simply isn't recognizing that anything is plugged in.

Click to expand...

Can you not connect the old hard drive, internally as secondary to the new one!

What is the makel & model of each HD ? Are they SATA or IDE HD's ?

@theog - Is the attachment what you were looking for?

@mitchell65 - Would there be space inside the laptop? I don't know how to do that...

@Doc Brown - I'm assuming they're both SATA. They're both less than two years old...

Is the old hard drive from a laptop or desktop?

Plug in your disk via the usb port.
From an elevated command prompt (in start type cmd, right click on cmd.exe, run as administrator)
type
>diskpart
>list disk

if it sees the disk
>list volume
>select disk n where n is the listed disk number
>list partition
>exit

Do you see anything other than your main HDD?

Cusser1119 said:

@mitchell65 - Would there be space inside the laptop? I don't know how to do that...

Click to expand...

Had you filled in your system specification we would have known that you are talking about a laptop. When you referred to "Your Computer" I assumed it was a Desktop!
Can you get access to a Desktop?

Cusser1119 said:

@theog - Is the attachment what you were looking for?

@mitchell65 - Would there be space inside the laptop? I don't know how to do that...

@Doc Brown - I'm assuming they're both SATA. They're both less than two years old...

Click to expand...

YES.

What type of enclosure are you using?

When you plug in the enclosure will Windows install the drivers?


You may like to take a read of DocBrown thread
http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/137123-build-your-own-external-hard-drive.html

Bad enclosure?

Windows disk management utility is not 100% reliable. (I'm not going to chase down the threads on the forum showing this). Partition Wizard Boot CD is more reliable.

Have you used the command line prompts or just not bothered

Building your own enclosure involves plugging in a connector (your's could be faulty for you). Have you plugged it into another PC