Recovering Data from a WORKING Hard Drive

Hey, folks.

Total n00b question here but I was having trouble finding search terms that would get me the information I needed.

Recently the power supply on my old G4 died and I'm trying to retrieve a few gigs of data that I hadn't backed up from the hard drive (Seagate Barracuda ATA IV, model ST380021A, 80 gigs). I got a power supply cable and a cable that lets me plug it into the back of my friend's 3GHZ iMac Intel Core Duo.

I figured that, when I did this, it would just pop up on the desktop like my external hard drive does, but it won't. Am I missing something obvious wrong here? I'm certain that the hard drive is working but I can't figure out how to access what's on it.

Thanks in advance.

I suspect you either need an ATA carrier or a universal adapter in order to hook that drive to your friend's iMac.

I'm using an SATA to USB cable to no avail.

You can not use a SATA to USB cable for an ATA drive. It won't work as you found out. You either need an ATA carrier or universal adapter as I indicated in my first reply.