Override OS on slave to retrieve data from slave?

Help! I'm not a pro here, just want to get some old files off of my broken HD. It's a partitioned drive with 15Gig on the FAT32, which also holds the damaged OS (Windows XP startup files got corrupted in a power outage). Then there's a 60Gig NTFS drive with no OS on it that has most of the files I want on it. When I plug it into a USB/IDE cable to run it as an external, the only part of the drive that shows up is the FAT32 part that has the OS on it. When I try to open it in Explorer (my laptop uses Vista), Explorer stops responding. Sometimes I can see the folders but I'm never able to open them. I'm thinking there is a conflict with both drives trying to operate simultaneously, but I'm not sure how to fix it. All I want are family photos and files from the old D drive, and I'm coherent enough to follow directions and steps if I'm told how to do this. Thanks! If you need more info let me know..