Windows 8 computer crashed - Trying to get user data off o

Hello - I have a laptop that crashed over the weekend. I need to do a restore on the computer but before I do I need to get the documents and pictures off of the drive. I've taken the drive out of the laptop and plugged it into my Windows 7 desktop using an external USB bay. I hear the computer detect the drive but it will never show up as a drive. If I look in Computer Management it shows up in there. Can anyone tell me the best way to get the data off please? Thank you

The quickest and easiest way I can tell you that would work, would be to use Hiren's Boot CD, the link is below. You can boot to "Mini-XP" and it will give you a full Explorer that you can use to move files off the drive to a safe place, just connect a USB drive to the system and you can copy all of your important Data to the external drive.

You probably could also use WinPE or WinRE, I am not sure if those have a working File Explorer.

The only other thing you could do would be to take the drive out and stick it into another system where you can copy the files off.

There may also be a version of Linux that can mount NTFS volumes so you can move files that way, if someone has a link to an easy Linux that can be used like that please post it.

Can you assign a letter to it in Disk Management?

If he uses Hiren's and Mini-XP, it will mount the drive and he can connect any USB drive he wants.