iomega cd enclosure as hd enclosure ?

Has anyone tried turning an iomega cd burner enclosure into a hard drive enclosure. I have and old usb iomega external cd burner I bought for a legacy mac. I put it away because it is so much slower that what I have now. It occurred to me that I might be able to use it to run an external hard drive. I plugged in the cd burner to be sure it still worked and it did. When I put a cd in it showed up right away. When i replaced it with a hard drive, it doesn't show either in the disk utilities or the desktop. The drive is a known good drive (original drive). I was wondering if anyone knew if iomega installed some kind of firmware that only recognized its cd burner. I just hate to waste it if it can be used. Any suggestions welcome. thanks