I have a laptop that is dead, and i need to get the files from the harddrive. When i put the harddrive on the cable, it tells me that the drive needs to be formated, it also shows up as 0kB free and 0kb used. But when i put another drive on the usb cable, it pulls them up fine. Also, the laptop isnt complelty dead, just the chipset is serverly damaged. So if i put the drive in that computer, it will boot to windows. However, due to the bad chipset, the usbs and cdrom and internet do not work when i get into windows, so i have no way to save the data. Is there anyways that i can retreive this data, or a program that will allow me to see the files when i hook it up via usb?

What about PCMCIA? or PCI-EXpress slot- Get a addon card- EG usb/lan/ wifi... then copy the files

If hard drive is IDE then cdrom should work because it runs on the same channel... but that irrelevant.
Try the PCMCIA addons

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the chipset on the laptop is really bad, it only even stays on if you press on the chipset, and its impossible to do that for extended periods of time. I was just wondering if there is a way for me to recover this data via usb, since it isnt recognizing the drive when i try it that way.

If your computer does not recognizes a hdd, it most likely internal damage, SA or read/write heads.

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The thing that i dont understand is that if it is damaged, why will it boot in another computer? i dont think that it is damaged, i just dont think that the computer that i am on sees the right partition, and i dont know how to change that.

Oh--
It should work straight away.
Connect it in the USB.
You can try and download a cd called Hiren boot.
Mount it in windows and it has many recovery tools. Do not initialse your ahrd drive in the other windows if it says 0 size.

Make sure also that the drive jumper (if applicable) is not set to CableSelect! Make it master

_________________
It seems that the unluckiest people in the world are those that don't backup.
Free Solutions
Picasaweb- Pictures and movies | Dropbox - Documents and other..

I was told that the cable that i am using is of poor quatlity, and that is the reason that it doesnt work. Since when i put the drive in any ide laptop that i have, it goes to boot off windows, and them bluescreens(due to different brand of laptop and chipset) i think that the drive must be fine. iI doubt that the drive would be bad, and boot. It makes no noises, and seems to be good.