Hard drive: was internal, now external. How do I access?

Factual Questions
1

I’m a moron and accidentally wiped the wrong drive when I installed XP on my computer, I wiped out my back-up instead of the formatting and installing the new drive (that replaced the defective old primary.) Needless to say, I lost almost all my files. The good news, about 90% of the lost files are on the HD of my old PC. The bad news is that ALL I’ve got left of my old PC is the HD. So, I disassemble my external CDRW and use the “base” to hook up the old HD to my PC as an external USB drive. My new PC “sees” the old HD, but can’t read it.
My old PC was an out-of-the-box HP running Windows ME, my current one is a “FrankenPC” (based on bits and pieces from several computers) running XP.
So, any suggestions on how to get my PC to read the old HD?

Thanks in advance, DESK

2

Can you attach the “old” drive as an internal drive (on the primary or secondary channel)? Then you should be able to copy the files you want from the “old” drive to the “new” drive.

3

That’s what I would do. I would just install the old one as a secondary hard drive. You will need to change the jumper settings on it though.