my hard drive crashed with a registry error on inspiron 600m. dell sent me a new hard drive (actually a refurbished hard drive :(, but it seems to work ok.

i still have my old hard drive, which they want back. on it, i have many many pictures i'd like to recover.

does anyone have any detailed information on how i can recover that data myself, as a novice. i read something about making it a slave to a desktop hard drive. is this feasible? is it expensive to send out to those data recovery companies?

thanks for your help.