Unrecognized hard drive in enclosure connected via usb

Hello,
I had an acer aspire 5532 with a toshiba hard drive in it. The computer refused to boot up. After several attempts to repair it, my husband bought a new computer. I have removed the hard drive (not making any weird noises so doesn't appear to be a physical failure) and put into a rocketfish hard drive enclosure to perhaps gain access to retrieve my files. However, in connecting it to my new computer, it just comes up as a new external usb device. In looking at device manager, it lists the device, but shows nothing on it, and doesn't give any access to it. Can anyone perhaps give another method to get the info off of this hard drive without costing an arm and a leg? BTW, I had a western digital hard drive installed in the enclosure, connected it, and it came up fine on the new computer, so I don't think it is the enclosure at all.