Old pc hard drive as external with formating.

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No, it should not matter that you have Win XP on this drive.

Recently, I transferred a 750 GB hard disk which had (and still has) Win7 on it, to a different computer (Vista) as a secondary storage drive. Works fine, One of these days I will delete the Win7 from this disk.

The thing is that the hard drive isn't in my new pc, it's hooked up though a usb external hard drive enclosure. I can't put the hard drive directly into my new pc too as the connecters are different. I've tried having the jumper on different settings, master on/slave off has the light blink green/red, have it on cable select does the same and not having the jumper on anything has the light stay a solid red.

If it is in an enclosure and connected to a different PC, then install the correct driver.

Why would I need to install drivers for the enclosure if it already works when I use a different hard drive?

The hard drive may be different.

Hmm... They don't seem that different,
the one that works without issue is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 200 gig and one that doesn't work is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 500 gig.

Seagate had problems with some of their older revisions. The 7200.12 is fine; not so the earlier .11, .10 revs. - This could be part of the problem.

Oh, is there another way to get the data off the hard drive?

Best answer selected by shadic88.

Thank you! Happy New Year!