Format

Hello,
I am learning but I am still green. I am trying to get some pictures and documents off a drive that had a bad trojen and won't open up windows. so I put in another hard drive and put the bad one as slave, then I put it as cd and I still can't get anything off it because it always says the drive is not formatted. I thought if you format you erase everything. Help I just need the pics and a few papers. Thanks