CANNOT READ DATA FROM OLD INTERNAL SATA HDD

Hello,

I have recently been forced to buy a new laptop due to a hardward malfunction (not a software issue) and now want to retrieve the information from my old laptop’s HDD; It is a ST9808210A Seagate Momentus 4200A which I have never had any problems with previously. I purchased a SATA to USB connector and have plugged the HDD into the USB drive of my new laptop. The HDD is detected by the new laptop but does not come up on ‘My Computer’; on closer inspection in Administrator Tools, Disk Management, I see that the Disk is visible as ‘Disk 1’ but has a black bar above it and is ‘Unallocated’, on the left hand bar it is ‘Unknown’ and ‘Not Initialized’. When right clicking on the bar the only options available to me are ‘New Simple Volume’ and ‘Properties’ – neither of which enables the disk to work. There is also the option to ‘initialise’ the disk when clicking on the left hand bar, when this is tried I get the error message: ‘The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error.’ Any ideas please – I really could do with getting several weeks of work off this disk!! THANKS.