>>>>>Hi,
>>>>>my old disk drive in my USB to SATA 3.5" Hard Drive enclosure died so I bought a new one (2TB) and plugged it in. However, when I power the enclosure on and plug it into my USB port, nothing happens. Even if the disk has not yet been formatted, shouldn't the PC recognise it as a new drive? Or maybe my enclosure has died too?
>>>>Any signs of powering up (e.g. LED indicator, noise of harddisk spinning up)? If not, you could check with multimeter to see if the power adaptor is putting out enough juice. Also sniff near the circuit board in the enclosure to see if you have the telltale "fried component" smell. Another potential problem I've seen is sometimes the interface can't handle drives above a certain size.
>>>
>>>The green LED comes on, but the red one doesn't.
>>>
>>>Unfortunately I don't have a multimeter.
>>>
>>>Sniffing does give me a very slight "fired component" smell so maybe that is it!
>>
>>The magic smoke container has sprung a leak... just ask for a replacement :).
>
>LOL. This one is 2 or 3 years old so I'll have to buy one.

I recently bought a 4TB external USB 3.0 portable hard drive from Best Buy - kinda neat as it fits in a shirt pocket and requires no external power - think I paid less than 150 bucks for it too.