Possible Hard Drive Enclosure failure. Possible HD failure.

Hey guys and gals. I was trying to backup some files (yet another issue). My external hard drive enclosure appears to be malfunctioning. Or it could be the SATA drive itself. You see when I try to turn it on the computer can't read it. Perhaps it was a power surge or something IDK. Does anybody have any suggestions or recommendations?

Tomorrow I'll try to take the computer apart and test the drive itself; I have a limited number of SATA interfaces on my motherboard and one of them is connected to the OS HD. I hope it is o.k., there are some recent backups I don't want to lose. Would be a pain to ask for those last few documents at work and rescan them. Guess I am going to need 4 external backups.

It is a Manhattan USB / EATA Enclosure 3.5 (large internal HD). Model Number unknown.

I knew I should have invested in 'more' storage . Well, my weekly backup was today even though I normally backup files right after.

 

I tired the HD and it didn't work. It' stalled my system on start-up. When I tried it in the enclosure; the drive was somewhat detected. In that the OS displayed it in 'My Computer', but couldn't access it. I guess the drive is dead yes?

On that note I am looking for old school PCI card that supports both IDE and SATA (and eSata). For you see I am going to do just that and I have for the moment and older computer. Most of the cards that I've found are PCI Express interface cards.

Can I use a PCI Express card in an older PCI slot? Couldn't find anything saying I could or could not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express

Here are some ex maples of what I am looking for:

This one would be great except I need something with external ports.
Rosewill RC-215 VIA PCI SATA 1.5G x2 / ATA 133 (IDE) x1 Controller Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132009

MASSCOOL PCI Card, 1 external SATA + 2 internal SATA and 1 internal IDE Model XWT-RC018
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815280001

Also if anybody knows where I can get SATA to eSATA cables (for future upgrades) please let me know. If I am going to throw down for cards, I am going to make them last as long as possible.

 

I can't access the drive .

 

When I get the enclosure I will see if the drive can be read at all, but my PC can't. I decided to send the RAID card back. First I'll test the new drive. Then I will test the old one. My computer keeps freezing up every time I try to access the old-drive. When I plug it into my computer or the enclosure I currently have.

I hope the drive is not fried, but since I plugged it into the computer via SATA connection and it didn't work it probably is. The only other thing I could do is wipe the OS... again, but it isn't due for another 7 months.

 

I have the new hard drive and the new enclosure. They appear to work fine. I am still working on the old HD and the old enclosure. In control panel / computer management / disk management the drive comes up as "healthy." There was an error message that came up, but I can't get it to come back up. The drive doesn't come up in disk defrag.

Update: I have the error message.

" I :\ is not accessible. The parameter is incorrect."

So the drive shows up. I can't access it. Doesn't show up on defrag.

What am I to do?