I salvaged the hard drive from my crashed laptop, put it in a USB2-powered case and was up and running with it as an external drive.
Unfortunately, the USB cable became disconnected during a file transfer, and since then neither of my other machines will recognize the external drive. I understand this kind of disconnect can damage the drive or at least the data on it, and I think I've ruled out everything else that might be causing the lack of recognition.
Going through the My Compute/Manage menu in Windows, I can see the drive and when I click on it I get a ''Device Cannot Start/Code 10.''
I'd like to salvage what I can off the drive. Failing that, I'm willing to reformat, but I don't see how I can get at it to even do that.
TIA for any help or suggestions.

Chowhound
Comic Vine
GameFAQs
GameSpot
Giant Bomb
TechRepublic