External Hard Drive...not connecting, kinda

Hoping for some help fom the techies here since over at another forum, I'm receiving no help...I should learn to always appraoch AF first. :D

Aniwho, my external hard drive crapped out. Don't know why or how, so I took apart the enclosure, brought the actual drive to Circuit City where they plugged it up into another one and it works! So my drive is safe. Whew!

So now I went out and bought a new enclosure and it won't work. I connected it up to my laptop, I heard the *beep beep* then it said device not installed properly. I unplugged and plugged it up again hoping it would reinstall. Well, I keep hearing the *beep beep* which is the good version and not the *beep beep* meaning not reading device. So I know it reads it, but going uner My Computer, I can't find a way to open it. Also, going through Device Manager it says there's no driver installed for it. So I don't know what to do. I'm going to take it back up to Circuit City, since I work there I can get help without paying, and see what's up. I'm hoping its simple and something stupid I did.

So any help, thanks guys!

Operating System?
2.5" or 3.5" disk?
IDE or SATA?

Is it bus powered, or does it have it's own power pack?

If it's bus (USB) powered, make sure you're plugging in both USB plugs so it can draw enough current from your USB ports.

Try plugging it into a Desktop computer, and if it works there, it's probably a laptop/USB/power issue.

When it's plugged in, does it show up under Disk Management? Right click My Computer > Manage > Disk Management.

My maxtor drive was the same way. It just needed the updated driver to be recognized.

^Tried it. COme to find out, probably it's the cheap enclosure. I'm getting a new one from BH. BB nor CC has a decent selection.