hp pavilion HD with external drive enclosure

My nephews hp computer had stopped working. being old he didn't want to do any repair just get his photos off the HD. So I took the samsung HD out used the 32mb slave jumper settings and put it in an external drive enclosure. the device is recognized but no drive letter is installed. I can see the drive complete with partitions in computer management but the only option I have is to format it. Any suggestions? Thanks

I have to ask...why use the 32MB jumper setting?

I would have just connected it directly to the motherboard (if possible), using the appropriate jumper setting. That eliminates a few possible complicating factors if the drive doesn't work.

If you can see the drive in Disk Management but you cannot see the file structure...chances are the file structure or the drive itself is in trouble and you may need to try data recovery software to access any files on said drive.

Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File Recovery - Home - http://www.recuva.com/

Louis

As state above I would remove the drive from the enclosure and install it in a tower to remove the possibility of problems with the external enclosure.

It is an ide drive and my computer only has sata connections. The external drive works for other disks drives. I have tried several jumper settings and I get different results. On some it sees the drive and gives it a letter but it says it is not formatted. On others it sees the drive, the hp recovery partition fat32 and the other partition ntfs but will not assign it a drive letter. In disk management the only option i have for the drive is to delete the partition.

hmm If I format the drive can I then use recurva to look for the files?

Format and pray is not a good option.. Is there another PC you can try it on. It appears the drive may be bad since other drives seem to work ok in the enclosure.