hard drive issues

[msucal]

I purchased a USB to SATA/IDE cable connector in the hopes of salvaging data from what I think might be a busted laptop HD.  I dropped my laptop from my lap to the floor (not a very considerable distance, but apparently enough to do damage) and began getting a "Media test failure" error when I tried to boot.  After much googling, it looks like it could be the hard drive or possibly the motherboard.  At any rate, it wouldn't boot, so a last ditch effort (as I haven't backed up the drive and it has important pictures on it that I'd be very sad to lose), I purchased the cable.  After hooking it up to my desktop computer, it recognizes the laptop hard drive as a new disk drive and shows up in Device Manager, and give me the "Safely remove hardware" icon in the taskbar.  However, it does NOT show up in Disk Management so I can assign it a letter or anything, and doesn't show up in My Computer.

Any advice?  Or should I just chalk it up to a mistake and try to move on?

Not that it'll help, but the HD is a Toshiba 80G SATA, and was running off Vista.  My desktop that I'm trying to locate the drive with is an HP Pavilion running Windows XP.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[ChrisXPPro]

Hmmm - no drive letters ... I know that feeling!

I have no great suggestion other than - go see a thread I ran on this sorta thing - various things mentioned which might be worth you trying.  My problem still exists.

http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php?topic=60714

[msucal]

Thanks Most of those tips are only applicable if it IS in the Disk Management screen, which it's not for me, so I can't even attempt to assign it a letter.  In device manager though, it shows up, shows up as working properly, and all that jazz that usually goes along when a device is correctly connected.  Sigh.

[ChrisXPPro]

Oh sorry - I forgot your mention re not showing in Disk management.

Hmmm again ........ that is odd if it shows in dev man as a drive - very odd.  When you plug it in - does Win's ''bubble'' on system tray ID it as drive and type etc? 

Same symptoms every time you remove and insert?

Puzzled right now - anyone else?

[msucal]

Depending on which USB port I try, sometimes the bubble comes up as "disk drive" sometimes as "USB to SATA HD disk drive" or something like that.  When I go into properties under device manager, it says it's working properly.  There's really no drivers to roll back or update to, the adapter came with a driver disk but it insists that if you have XP you don't need the drivers.  All the drivers are labled for Windows 98.

It doesn't identify it as any TYPE of specific drive when the bubble comes up, just as a disk drive.  It takes a few seconds, and then says that it was connected or installed correctly, whatever plug and play things it has to do.

[merlin]

Hard drive ...Has add it?...buy a new one/?

[street1 (RIP)]

 Does the 2.5 laptop drive have jumper settings
you should change ?

Have you tried a enclosure ?

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3195233&Sku=M501-1031

[msucal]

I haven't tried an enclosure yet, that was going to be my next course of action before giving up.  I DO plan on getting another HD, as well as some common sense in the area of data backup, but I was hoping to get the data off regardless. 

[street1 (RIP)]

The best data backup program I have found is Acronis.

[msucal]

Thanks.   Does/Would an enclosure make a difference, based on the issues I'm having?  I just can't understand why it shows up in device manager, but not anywhere else.