Sata to usb problems...

[LilWhiteChris]

I brought a sata to usb to connect my laptops hd to my computer.
when I first plugged it in it was saying that it 'malfunctioned' and wont show up anywhere however in the device manager the only place its shown is under the tab 'universal serial bus controllers' in which it had a yellow triangle next to it, when I clicked on this it said 'unknown device'

anyway I turned my computer on and off a few times like people suggested and iv also now tried a different usb port, after trying that its now not showing up at all :/

the green light is lit on the caddy and the hd starts up and you can hear it spinning, however there Is no indication anything has been plugged in and not even the unknown device in the device manager is showing up so im totally out of ideas now...

oh and yes I tried refreshing and scanning for hardware changes, and iv ensured my drivers are up to date.

note: my laptop had windows vista and my computer has windows 7 would that matter?

any help?


UPDATE when I put the hd into the other usb ports the ones I tried where 3.0 ports or ss ports whatever you call them, once I take the drive out and put it back in the normal 2.0 ports I get the malfunction message pop up again in the bottom right of my screen.

 

[PizzaTheHutt]

Do you have any other cables that you can connect the caddy with to ensure that it isn't the hard drive that has failed? Also, it wouldn't be the fact that you have Vista on one laptop and 7 on another as the file format on the drive will be the same as when it was formatted. It only matters if you have used a Mac with the hard drive as they have been known to cause some issues with windows formatted drives when writing to them (NTFS partitions don't really play nice with Macs).

 

[LilWhiteChris]

Do you have any other cables that you can connect the caddy with to ensure that it isn't the hard drive that has failed? Also, it wouldn't be the fact that you have Vista on one laptop and 7 on another as the file format on the drive will be the same as when it was formatted. It only matters if you have used a Mac with the hard drive as they have been known to cause some issues with windows formatted drives when writing to them (NTFS partitions don't really play nice with Macs).

But surely the green led indicates the cable is fine no?
it just says 'usb device not recognised' when I plug it in :S
if the hd has failed is there no way I can get my data from it at all?

 

[LilWhiteChris]

I was also thinking what if I take out my hd in my computer and replace it with my laptops one would that work?

 

[PizzaTheHutt]

Do you have any other cables that you can connect the caddy with to ensure that it isn't the hard drive that has failed? Also, it wouldn't be the fact that you have Vista on one laptop and 7 on another as the file format on the drive will be the same as when it was formatted. It only matters if you have used a Mac with the hard drive as they have been known to cause some issues with windows formatted drives when writing to them (NTFS partitions don't really play nice with Macs).

But surely the green led indicates the cable is fine no?
it just says 'usb device not recognised' when I plug it in :S
if the hd has failed is there no way I can get my data from it at all?

If the Hard Drive has failed you could use data recovery software but I personally don't really think it has. If you have a spare slot in the case that you can put the laptop HDD into your desktop PC you can use it but if you don't you might as well exchange the sata to USB cable at the store you bought it from as it is most likely defective.