External HDD used in PC problem?

[ol' boy]

I have an external hard drive that I use to back up my files on. One day the external HDD case just decided to die.
Long story short, I took the HDD out of the case and mounted in my HDD caddy of my PC (one of those slide out 3.5" drive bays), it had to be jumpered as Slave for the PC to see it.
Windows explorer does not see it so I checked disk management and it tells me that it is "unallocated". My option when right click over the drive are to "partition", which i don't want to do, as there is 300gig of photos, music etc on there.

I am using WinXP Pro (SP2), Root drive is NFTS, new drive in caddy is NFTS. There is nothing wrong with the new HDD, ran a DOS 24 hour checker over it last night.

Is there anyway i can make this drive visable to the OS without Partationing it (which i guess means losing the data on it?)
Drive is a Seagate 320gig IDE

Thanks

[Philquad]

sounds strange,
think you need another external caddie, as said, if its unallocated it only wants to format it.
can u allocate without formatting?

[ol' boy]

Thats pretty much what i'm asking Phil

External Caddy? not sure, but the Internal Caddy is fine.
I see there is a lot written about this on the net, it's not an unreasonable thing to do. Drop ya HDD from external case into ya PC. Heaps of people do it, and from what i am reading, heaps of people come across the same problem too.... i am yet to find an answer.

Talk about f$#king frustrating

[Philquad]

i do it all the time
what i mean is another external caddy may be your only choice
it maybe becoz the drive was allocated as primary and clashing with your main drive, but im not positive, sorry
you could try this

works great on 2nd drive, dont use on main drive.
salvage wat u want than format it

[ol' boy]

Thanks Phil... You be onto something with an allocation clase, although i know for a fact the drive is labelled "M" when used with the USB case, which would NOT be clashing with any other drive in the PC.

I don't much option to recover stuff it, as that is my largest drive... bugger!


^^^^ this where i am at

[Philquad]

think i see it
isnt big 1 320gig ?
says 19.
maybe coz your main 1 is fat32 not ntfs
can u format the c and make it ntfs and reinstall?
then maybe itll see the 320

[ol' boy]

I went through this process a the other day too, that is when i had installed the drive as Cable Select and Master. I hope that didn't stuff things up?

[ol' boy]

think i see it
isnt big 1 320gig ?
says 19.
maybe coz your main 1 is fat32 not ntfs
can u format the c and make it ntfs and reinstall?
then maybe itll see the 320

Huh? Drive XP is on is NFTS. Mentionad that in first post Looks like i'm back to the drawing board, but thanks for the suggestion.

[Philquad]

lol sorry, thought that was your drive pic
i never use cable select, just master\slave
have u tryed allocating it?
it wont format unless you hit the button later.