Windows 7 - Need to get files from dead laptop- drive shows as "System Reserved"

Someone spilled a liquid on my wife's laptop damaging the keyboard and internals. It cannot boot but I need to get the files from the HD. I bought one of those USB to laptop HD cables, removed the HD and hooked the cable to my desktop Windows 7 PC. The drive came up as "System Reserved" with only the boot sector folders visible. I hooked it to an XP PC and autoplay showed all the folders but I couldn't see them in "Computer." I tried backing everything up to a DVD but it failed for some reason. This somehow may have damaged the drive.

The drive now appears and disappears in device manager. When it's listed, it shows as working properly but no longer shows up in Computer or Disk Management.

Any chance of getting files off of the laptop HD?

Well.. it may be that the drive was damaged by all the shorting out possibly going on during the accident.

But I would try to remove the USB/HD cable as those can sometimes be problematic in various ways (like power issues to drive, and drive size issues etc).

If it is a sata drive you should be able to hook it straight up to the inside of a desktop and see how it works there. (Now I better C my A here and say that if the drive has been damaged electrically, hooking it up to your desktop could have some small chance of causing more damage there...)