Laptop Hard Drive wont initialize

[reconviperone1]

Hello Friends, I pulled a 80gb hard drive out of a dead hp laptop, my intention was to use it as an external drive, but the drive wont initialized so I can't format it. It comes up as drive 7-not initialized-unknown, wont show up on windows 7,or xp. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[moody89]

Are you 100% sure the HDD isn't faulty? Maybe that's why the original laptop was 'dead'

 

[reconviperone1]

The original had a cracked screen, but it actually booted to xp, so I think the hd is ok. Just weird though, I tried, xp,7, and even ubuntu, and it will show, but with no capacity, no id, etc. I was very careful when i removed it, so I don't think I damaged it.

 

[moody89]

Not sure what to suggest...how are you attaching your laptop HDD to your desktop? Are you using an enclosure or just an adaptor? Do you know that your enclosure or whatever are working ok?

 

[reconviperone1]

I used and adapter, and it at least pops up, with the enclosure with double usb wont come up at all

 

[moody89]

I have heard of cases where a separate power supply was needed for the HDD in the enclosure due to the USB port not being capable of supplying the required power. Surely this can't be the case when using an adaptor though. Are you able to run any tests on the HDD at all. There should be test utlities available from the manufacturer's website.