HELP please - Vista & old IDE/USB driver

Hi everyone.

A friend gave me his hard disk which contains all the pictures of his baby girl for me to retrieve as he has physical damage on it. This is the only place he has them all, since she was born until she turned four.

I plug his drive into an old USB/IDE external drive enclosure, and my new Vista computer which has my special recovery software on it won't recognize it.

I've been through various forums and tried several fixes, but nothing works.

Vista says my driver is the correct one (from 1999) but stubbornly refuses to let the external USB/IDE drive work.

Does anyone have any suggestions please? I am pulling my hair out.

Thanks!