I'm trying to install a Western Digital Serial ATA Hard Drive into the external hard drive enclosure. There are no instructions as to what cables need to be attached and to where

try to see if this will help NEED HELP purchase Masscool external Hard Drive enclosure USB running...

To put a hard drive in to be an external drive.

try setting it up as an external hard drive using the usb ports there is an adaptor that is available from Jaycar that allows you to put the hard drive in it and it uses a usb cable to the computer
then download a suitable reader program to read the files as the win 7 will want to know the program that wrote the files

you can try some data recovery software. You can see
http://www.asoftech.com/adr/
It tells the steps how to perform data recovery.

If above does not work, you may have to format the hard drive (use quick format), and then use above mentioned software to scan again the hard drive and recover your files.

The external storage device has several major components:

* USB cable

* external power-supply

* disk-drive inside the enclosure

* USB-to-disk-drive adapter inside the enclosure.

Try a different USB cable.
Try a different USB port on your computer.
Try a USB port on a different computer.

Take a multi-meter, and measure the output voltage/amperage of the power-supply,
and compare with the specifications on the label of the power-supply.

Open the enclosure, and remove the disk-drive, and attach it as a "slave" drive in a desktop computer, to see if bypassing the USB-to-disk-drive adapter bypasses the problem.

Look at the label on the disk-drive, for manufacturer, product-number, serial-number, and manufacture date. Access the manufacturer's web-site, and use "check warranty status" to see if the warranty still is valid. If so, the drive can be replaced, at minimal cost to you.

Buy a new, compatible, disk-drive, and install it in the enclosure, to "revive" your external storage device.

Search online for a professional "data recovery service". For a significant fee, they can repair your disk-drive, just long-enough to copy your files to a new disk-drive.

Note that W.D. has a "Customer Loyalty" program. Buy a new W.D. disk-drive through the W.D. web-site, at a significant discount.

OK your hard drive is an ATA drive.
You motherboard will have two hard disk controllers, on the 1st controller the ATA cable will have two connectors - a connector will have the C drive hard disk attached to it and the jumper on the hard drive will be set as the Master drive. You may also have a CD or DVD drive connected to this cable, if so then the CD or DVD drive will be jumpered as a Slave drive.
If the second connector does not have a drive connected, then you can connect the second hard drive to this connector BUT it needs to be jumpered as a Slave drive.
You may elect to connect the second hard drive to the second IDE controller instead on the first controller. If there aren't any drives on the second ATA cable then the second hard drive can be jumpered as either a Master or Slave drive.
If there is a drive on the second ATA cable you need to determine the jumper setting of that drive and then set the jumper on the second hard drive to a different setting. BOTH drives on the same cable CANNOT have the same drive setting.
After installing the second hard drive, check the BIOS configuration of the second hard drive, if the hard drive is detected then when Windows boots up you will see the hard drive and its contents.

This may sound silly, but does the external enclosure have power? You may have neglected to connect the required power adapter, or it may not be working properly. You might also have a problem with the enclosure's internal power or data cables. They are sometimes pretty flimsy, and sometimes they can go bad.

There's also the chance the drive itself is bad and isn't being detected as a result. Or the interface board in the external enclosure may have failed, and the drive is OK but the computer doesn't see it. If you are connecting to a desktop PC, you can try connecting the drive directly to the main board using an IDE cable and try accessing it that way. Just be sure to set the master/slave jumper accordingly if you do that.

Try a replacement USB cable first, and test the MyBook on a different computer, to ensure the fault is on the external storage unit.

There are two possibilities:

The Mybook USB/ATA controller board is faulty.
In this case you can simply take apart the enclosure and mount the disk into a new enclosure. WD Mybooks are SATA, but double check the hard disk connector to ensure.

The hard disk inside is faulty.
In this case repair may be expensive. You need to locate a data recovery facility with a 'clean room' , the cost is usually more than $800.

If this happened after a power surge, then the problem is most likely a faulty controller board.

If instead you have dropped the hard disk it is possible an hard drive failure, in that case repair will be expensive.

A replacement enclosure will stfrom art about $20 on Ebay or Amazon, and must not necessarily be WD .
Check if your disk is Sata or PATA (IDE) before buying the enclosure.