I have been trying to sort this for a couple of days now, and fast getting nowhere.

When we had to move and downsize, I took the hard drive out of my old pc thinking I could maybe one day use it as an external drive on my current Dell desktop.

I finally got round to purchasing a USB2.0 to IDE&SATA cable with all the fittings which looked just the job. So easy, it said, with full instructions. Got it all hooked up and plugged into my desktop via usb, where it was supposed to show as an extra drive, it's not visible.

One of the things that is not clear in the "instructions" is that it says "Please make sure your HDD has been set in "Master" position". I have no idea what this means and I cannot find anything such as a switch or slot on the drive that might be a reset thingy, so maybe this is the problem, can anyone please assist in simple non-tech language and help to put me out of my misery.

The drive is a western digital IDE 3.5".

The 40 pin plug that goes in the end of the disc has a red led thatis marked usb and is lit up when plugged into the desktop, it also has a green led which says ide/busy but that does not light up. I checked the power lead and that's ok and working.