[Libertarian4Bush]

my interpretation was that he got the proper KIT, but was being thwarted by HP's tiny "pinout to wafer" adapter, most often used to prevent pins from being bent when sliding the HDs into laptops.

also worth noting, after someone's good advice above about using it as a secondary - there's slim but real chance that the drive was NTFS-formatted, and/or otherwise security-restricted at the file level. this can throw one last wrench in retrieving the data, depending on which OS you're using to do so. in most cases, it can be done even IF this happens. just noting this to keep you from giving up if it does.

[Petronski]

If the drive is security-restricted, there's a very good chance that Linux will be able to read the data, because I believe Linux will ignore the security restrictions.

Even if encrypted, a brute-force method under Linux (hashing?) can usually get through.