Weird problem - SOLVED

Was able to plug the disk directly into a machine on an ide cable and take a look at it using the Ultimate Boot CD (dos version) One of the tools said that the partition was hidden, so I was able to change that attribute to normal and re-write the mbr and now it's a happy camper.
Thanks for looking.

Ok, this is odd.
The primary goal was to save the data from the C: drive on my old system, a 200g WD drive. The secondary goal was to reuse this drive as an external USB drive.
So I got a Maddog 3.5 mega vault enclosure and popped that sucker in there. This is where it get's weird.
When I plug it into the USB port on another machine (and I've tried three machines), it doesn't get assigned a letter, but it's recognized as working properly in the HD tab of Device Manager, and device manager also lists a USB mass storage device. Looking at it in Administrative tools, Computer Management, Disks, it's also recognized, and described as healthy, basic, ntsf, unknown partition. The problem may be this; when I tried to "Populate" the drive, it said all the same stuff except that instead of basic it said type was Master Boot Record. I don't know much, but I do know that XP doesn't like having two MBR's.
Ok, tried a could of logical things. moved jumpers around, tried cable select and slave and got the same results.
It's not totally dead, I think, because it's spinning around and making happy sounds. Also the old system (the drive i'm trying to save) was networked with my older systems. When I plugged it in to my laptop, my laptop saw and apparently activated the network. I could see the other machine, and I could see the directory structure for the USB drive, but I couldn't access it.
I tried running the trial version of OnTrack's Easy Recovery on it, which should have told me what files it thought were recoverable. Well, that sort of worked, it ran, it started listing files, then it flashed a message that said "Disk Error" put it kept chugging along and listing files.
Someone suggest that I try using Partition Magic, but I'd like other opinions before I donate $70 bucks to Symantec.
Really, I'd just like to mount this thing once and have my way with it, but obviously a true fix would be ideal.
Thanks in advance,
Trew