connecting external hd via sata cable problem

UKGUN

I have an old external hd with the connector broken.  I broke open the hard case and connected it via a sata to usb cable to my laptop.  I hear a "musical" sounding beeping coming from the hard drive.  The drive doesn't show up in my explorer.  I am using windows 10 64bit.  Under device manager it does show up.  How can I access the information?  The hd is a WD 120GB 2007 (year).  
model is WD 1200BEVS-00usto

any help greatly appreciated

EndlessWaves

There are a couple of reasons this happens.

The simplest to solve is that this is a network drive and the partitions are in a format Windows doesn't understand. Does the drive has any ethernet port or wi-fi symbol on it?

One of the most common is that the drive is encrypted. There are various projects out there to decrypt drives using various controllers (e.g. this one) but it's not particularly straightforward and may not be available for your particular drive.

In most cases you can make the drive usable by re-formatting it in disk management but this will wipe existing data.

If you need the data then the most reliable method is going to be to source a replacement enclosure.

CARLOS

Hard drives don't make any "musical sounds" the only noise they make is normally a slight clicking or a loud clicking if they have gone faulty, that's a pretty old drive at 11 years so may have gone faulty ?

What Sata adaptor are you using and does it have its own power supply ?

CARLOS

You seem to have got the wrong idea, OP says that the hard drive enclosure has a broken connector so they have broken it open and removed the drive and connected it with a Sata to USB adaptor also i am guessing the drive was working with the laptop before the connector broke so it should still work with it unless as above the drive has gone faulty or the new Sata adaptor is the problem ?

DavidG1

As the disk shows up in device manager, the adapter is working properly.

Go to disk management (type disk manager in the search box) and see if the disk is listed, right click on the listing and assign the drive a letter and or format it, create a new partition if necessary. Exit out and reboot, the drive should now be listed.

UKGUN

This is the adapter that I am using.

USB 3.0 to SATA22P Hard Drive Adapter Cable for 2.5" SSD/HDD Hard Disks - SATA to USB 3.0 External Converter and Cable,USB 3.0-SATA III converter

CARLOS

Yeah that should work as the drive you have is only 2.5inch, are there files on the drive that you want to access or can it be wiped ?

UKGUN

I want to access the files

CARLOS

does the drive show in disk management ?

UKGUN

it shows up under Devices and printers (best usb device).  It shows up under the "safely remove device" button on bottom right of screen.  It does not show up in explorer.

If I right-click on the icon under devices and printers......my explorer window crashes