Trouble using an old Maxtor hard drive

[GoldyCash]

I'm trying to recover data from a functioning Maxtor 33073U4.   It is formatted Fat32 and running Windows 98.  I removed the J50 jumper (and another horizontal jumper that I'm not quite sure why it was there) and hooked it up as the slave.  My master is a Hitachi HDt722525DLAT80 running Windows XP Media Center Edition, SP3 with NTFS file system.

The drive is visible in the boot menu, however when i try to boot from it I receive an error message "himem.sys is working improperly (error 502)" and I can get no further.  While in Windows XP, i  cannot see the drive in My Computer, as there is no drive letter assigned to it.  I can see it in Disk Management, and when i right click on the drive, my only option is to "Delete partition".

I really want to recover my personal data from this hard drive before i discard it, is there anyway i can get to it without reformatting this Maxtor drive?

Also, I only have a CD drive, no floppy drive and practically no experience with MSDOS or boot disc. (I don't have a windows disc, it was preloaded but i have a gateway recovery disc somewhere).

Please help thankyou.

[GoldyCash]

Update: I'm thinking about buying a Hard Drive Enclosure or a IDE to USB adaptor, does anyone have any advice about this?

Will it work and does anyone have an experience using either?

[patio]

I never trust USB when it comes to Data recovery...
This is however a personal opinion and you may hear others...
Your best bet is to hook up the drive as a slave and do this...
I would re-set the jumpers as they were initially and follow  This guide...

Since Win2K you can't expect a HDD from one machine to boot successfully in another...
This is by design.
Best of Luck...and let us know.

[GoldyCash]

Well I wish someone had told me that using a hard drive enclosure would not do a dang thing, because it did exactly the same thing.   The hard drive showed up in CMOS and Disk Management in the exact same way, still with no drive letter assigned. 
I tried hooking it up to a vista machine as well, and that didnt help. I tried some recovery software but they didnt work because I had no drive letter so I had no path.  So i formatted the disk and now its got a drive letter but I didn't write anything to it and I'm going to try and recover it , and if i cant im going to smash it with a sledgehammer and buy a bigger more quiet hard drive for this enclosure.

[patio]

Well I wish someone had told me that using a hard drive enclosure would not do a dang thing, because it did exactly the same thing.

I did...

I never trust USB when it comes to Data recovery...

Did you follow the instructions in the link above i provided ? ?