i have a 3.5" western digital my book 500gb external hdd....i gave it to a friend of mine and he broke the usb port in it...i went to a nearby comp repair shop and had him solder the thing...it didnt detect when i plugged it in my dell inspiron laptop........i recently saw about the 3.5" sata to usb enclosure, so i went to check it....strangely when its placed in the enclosure, its not detecting in windows...also when it was put as secondary(im guessing slave) to the shop fellow's desktop it shows up in the bios and starting, but then again doesnt show in windows 7, and the guy told me i need to data recovery to get teh data back

p.s.the wd hdd doesnt have os, just data, soo my question is: can i slave the drive to my dell laptop and try to recover the data....if so how? please i would really appreciate it...thanks in advance