External Hard Drives are not working with Surface

[Mundon]

Hello,

I have a few old laptop hard drives I've converted into external hard drives. They work fine with all other devices but no matter what external case I use they do not work with my Microsoft Surface RT (or my parents' for that matter). When the system does recognize there is a drive plugged in to to the Surface the hard drive itself makes a clicking noise and is not working.

Any assistance on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

[The White Falcon]

Are they powered independently or do they rely on the USB port for power?