Bios hangs after recognising hdd why?

After the hdd (Western Dig) is recognised, bios hangs. It was running XP Pro. Tried hooking hdd up to another computer running win 7 but in 'computer manager' nothing loads it just hangs at, 'connecting to virtual disks' and in 'device manager' again it's recognised but it won't populate. In 'computer' I click on it and all that happens is the round circle just keeps whirling but nothing opens. Why and how do I fix this?