Data Recovery / Ext. Drive Recognition

So, I have a smashed laptop with all my critical info on it. I bought a refurbished Dell Inspiron to replace it. I put the smashed unit's drive (Western Digital) into an external case (from a Toshiba external) to recover the data. The drive spins and shows up in Device Manager as a Toshiba when plugged in and says it's working properly... It will not show up in "This PC" (My Computer). I also tried it on the desktop at work... Same thing. What am I doing wrong? Is the Toshiba case proprietary? :confused

 

Take the WD out of the enclosure and attach it by a USB simple drive connector, similar to this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812156102

 

Thanks... Will give that a try!

 

Go to disk management (go to start and type diskmgmt.msc), is it there? Try assigning a drive letter if it is recognized in disk manager.

 

Thanks, but it doesn't show up there.

 

Found a SATA to USB cord online... Thoughts?

 

I would buy the model suggested by plodr. It's IDE/SATA to USB 2.0. Handy if you need to help a friend who has an older IDE HDD.

 

When I post examples, I always look at the review too. It has to have at least 4 stars and a large number of users.
I had a model that did not work so when I went shopping for a new model, I started checking what seemed to work well.

Whatever you consider buying, please look at the reviews. You don't want to waste money on something that does not work well.