my computer broke and i want to save its old data. i got myself another computer and a hard drive enclosure so that i can retrieve the data, but that didn't work. i tried 2 things. 1st, i set the drive on master and connect it with the enclosure to the computer. when i did that, i couldn't assess the drive at all. the 2nd thing i did was setting the drive on slave. when i did that, i could assess all irrelevant files, like the program files or the desktop icons, but i can't find any of the information that i saved in My Documents in the Documents and Settings folder on the old drive. several people told me to quick format the drive then use data recovery programs to recover the data, but i fear that this would be too risky and that some items would not be able to recover. is quick formatting the drive the only way, or is there a more efficient and effective way to retrieve data from an old hard drive?
just some other info: my old computer was a compaq presario with window xp. the hard drive in question is a samsung 80 gb ide hard drive and the hard drive enclosure i'm using is a Inland 3.5" hard drive enclosure.
Thank you in advance.