Hard drive as external hard drive problems

[NihmX]

Im not sure where exactly to post this, as it's not about the computer itself, but what came out of it.
I bought an X130e, and pulled the seagate momentus 320gb drive out and replaced it with an ssd. The idea is to put the HDD in an external and use it as a backup/media file drive
The computer works great, and I put the HDD in a Nexstar TX 2.5" sata external enclosure. Here is where the problems began.
I erased the disk, and reformatted it for ntfs, everything worked fine, until the next time I went to plug it in and use it. It wouldn't mount. no big deal, I repartitioned and reformatted it again, this time to FAT32.
again, it worked fine at first, then it wouldn't mount, this time because of a corrupted file structure.
This has gone on. Since then I have tried reformatting it using linux tools (fdisk and gparted) windows disk tools, even on a MAC, they all swear the drive is healthy (it should be! it's basically new and has not been dropped or abused since I removed it, and it worked fine in the computer) and format it just fine.
once I start using it though, it borks. sometimes while the file transfer is occurring, sometimes when I plug it in the second time.
I have heard of OEMs doing strange things to the hard drives they put in the computers, and I'm wondering if this might be the case? is there something left from when I pulled it out that is attempting to overwrite the partitions, flags or permissions?
I'd like not to have to chuck it, as an external would be useful!
as always, any advice is appreciated!

[Cigarguy]

That should work just fine.

Have you tried it on another computer? If you have another HDD enclosure try using it in another enclosure. If you have a desktop, hook it to a desktop and see what happens.

[Neil]

Yeah, I agree with Cigarguy...it could be a flaky enclosure or this particular drive needs slightly more power than the USB connection is providing. Does the enclose have a separate power connection in addition to the USB connector? Or, maybe two USB plugs (one for data and one for additional power)?