...And managed to remove the hard drive from the Dell and place it in that enclosure. I connected that to my current laptop and the hard drive shows up on the laptop. Two hard drive files specifically; one is called RECOVERY (F:) and the other is Local Disk (G:). I can look through (F:) but there isn't much to see. I can't go into (G:) though, Windows just freezes when I try to do so. How do I go about recovering files from (G:)? I've heard things like "slaving" it or something, I'm not sure what it is, but then I've also heard SATA drives (which I think this Dell's HDD is) don't require to be slaved...
RECOVERY (F:) is the Dell Restore Partition:
http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/index.htm(G:) Partition is your old "C"-partition. Since Windows freezes when accessing, it appears the file system is corrupted. In My Computer, right-click "G", select Tools, Check for Errors.
I've heard things like "slaving" it or something - refers to adding a 2nd hard drive via IDE (or PATA), where one drive is Master & the other is Slave. With newer computers that use SATA, there is no master/slave arrangement. Since you have a laptop, USB is the option, but the term "slaving" is still used.
The old drive is probably still good.