Backing up files using enclosure

[scoberman]

Hello, my laptop isn't working and I'm attempting to back up my files. I removed my hard drive and put it in an enclosure, and I have it hooked up to my friends computer. The drive comes up in my computer, but it says that it needs to be formatted. This will delete all my files though, which kind of defeats the purpose. What am I doing wrong?

 

[sminlal]

Just a sanity check - are you using the same OS as your original drive used? For example, if you take a drive from a dead Windows laptop and connect it to an Apple system, it won't recognize the drive because the two computers use different file systems to store data on the disk.