[Solved] Western Digital Hard Disk Drive External Wont work on WIn98se PC

Now dont laugh. Original PC Compaq 5660 Presarion from Nov 1998 had a 120 GB WD HDD that I used with 1394 Firewire.
Havent tried it in awhile but tonight I did and found it would not work, though no yellow warnings in Device Manager and Properties said it was functioning normally. Yet I could not open it and it did show as Drive D in My COmputer but said Not Available when trid to open it.
It has been so long and so much in between I have forgotten if it had CD for drivers or what. Am I missing something, or what?
I have not yet found a driver CD for HDD but there is one for a Firewire I think.
Any suggestions on what to do to make it work? Wanted to transfer My Documents off the PC to a different PC and HDD.

 

Addendum: This might belong in miscellaneous hardware but didnt know if it was a PC & driver issue or the HDD itself. Seems to be working. Plan to try it on other PCs in morning to see if it the HDD or the PC.

 

I meant the light on drive came on, drive spins, and the Device Manager said 'working properly' but I could not access with USB port. Then I read my note that for W98 PC used the 1394 ports, one on front and 3 on back. So I tried the 1394 port on front and back and still could not access drive contents. Used this for storing of acronis backups and haven't used for some years,so I think I will rethink this and try some more because must be doing something wrong. Tried it late at night and had no time to mess with it. But it used to work with the 1394 and 3 w98se PCs. Will let you know. My flash drive SanDisk Cruzer minis work without any drivers - I just plug them in. Really dont recall installing any drivers. Must explore further.

 

Got it working. Dont really understand it if ever I did. Have three 1394 cables that all seem to work. The drive works on w7 and XP with USB cable. The 1394 works but only with rear panel ports and not the front. Dont know why the front port isnt active or how to make it active, but it would be much more convenient as I need to have two PCs on floor under the desk in kneehole.
The HDD drive has 4 FAT3 partitions an is a 120 GB HDD...my first. I have some notes where Tony advised me on it back when new. Maybe a plug was loose when I tried it the first time for the partitions were just not showing up and I was mistaking the zip drive D for the HDD. Rear plug could have pulled out while moving PC. Any idea if possible to activate the front 1394 port? If not can just leave a cord plugged into back instead of pulling PC out every time.

 

Finally found notes that said front panel 1394 never did work and I installed an Adaptec AFW4300 CS 1394 Firewire 3 port card. in 9/2004. I do have an installation CD for this, but it seems OK. Guess front 1394 never did work which must be why I got the card.