Data recovery from a pulled hard drive

Hello,
As the title suggests, I am looking for some assistance regarding 'rescuing' data from a removed hard drive.
To give you some context, I lent my laptop to someone for a while, only to find out when I asked for it back that it had been sold—and the hard drive was pulled right out of it... 😱
Anyway, I was wondering what methods might allow me to access the files on that drive, assuming I don't want to just plug it into a new laptop if there's any other way...
Thanks in advance for any advice or help you can provide 🙏

1. Just plug it into a desktop as an extra internal drive and move everything over
2. throw it into a compatible external USB enclosure...

It isn't that simple.
One needs to understand the risks.
If you slap a hard drive from another machine into a new laptop, don't expect things to just work. You'll likely run into boot conflicts because both drives have an OS installed. Even if it does boot, you'll probably hit permission errors when trying to access your data. It's a mess.
You’re better off finding a tech expert to handle this with you.
A smart user would simply boot the computer using a CD or a USB stick running their own OS, like Linux.

The same issues arise if you plug it into a desktop via USB without knowing exactly what you're doing.

wearymason4 said:1. Just plug it into a desktop as an extra internal drive and move everything over
2. throw it into a compatible external USB enclosure...

Honestly, I’d just flip those two. Start with step 2. It's way more straightforward.

Thanks so much for all the advice. I was really hoping I could tackle this on my own, but it looks like I might have to call in a professional after all, haha.
Thanks again 😁

Hey, I've got a bit of a situation. I lent an external hard drive filled with movies and other files to a friend, who then plugged it into their Smart TV and formatted it, wiping everything. I couldn't recover anything myself, but apparently, someone "fixed" it so my computer would at least recognize it exists. That’s not really working, though—my PC won't actually open it. I can see it listed under my devices, but that's about it. I can't access any files or save anything new to it; it just shows up as "unavailable" and won't give me any info. If anyone knows how to fix this, please help.

You should probably jump into Disk Management—just delete that existing partition and then create a fresh one. That ought to do the trick... https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-open...gement-2626080

Larry Ortiz5 said:You should probably jump into Disk Management—just delete that existing partition and then create a fresh one. That ought to do the trick... https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-open...gement-2626080

I went in and deleted it, but I can't create a new one because my computer isn't even recognizing the drive

nimblecanyon16 said:I went in and deleted it, but I can't create a new one because my computer isn't even recognizing the drive

I managed to get it working using this: http://www.lsoft.net/partman.aspx

Now for a second question—do you happen to know any free software that could help me recover some data?

I tried using Partition Wizard Free, but the free version seems to be capped at just 1GB.

https://www.piriform.com/recuva/download

Maybe give this a shot...