With prior HD failures I've had great success replacing the HD with a Samsung SSD which includes cloning software that has worked perfectly each time.  They are around $50 these days for a 500GB drive.  Assuming it's hardware failure, data is usually unscathed & it leaves you like nothing ever happened.  YMMV.

Problem is the drive, even though its not an operation drive prevents windows from booting... I'm not sure what would happen in safe mode, but when I boot with this storage drive installed it goes to repair computer, names the failed drive and it fails in its operation (becomes stuck).. When I reboot windows is totally corrupt and in need of system restore. A real pain.

Maybe I could try a plug and play type USB to SATA option

Have you tried "disk drill"? From my reading, you can recover 500 Mb free. For more, you have to buy the premium edition. Here's a link: https://www.cleverfiles.com/data-recovery-software.html

There's also a video showing 5 steps. I have no experience with it, but maybe it'll help...

Wondershare Recoverit will read the entire drive for recognizable files and enable you to offload them to another drive.

I've just done that on my sister in law's machine...that was likely spiked...as the MoBo is toast and the drive was RAW.

It's not entirely silly to spend the money on the proggy...as it actually works...

BTW...that machine was no post...no boot...no signal to VGA ...

Forbes reviewed the various utilities for recovery...fwiw, a recommendation fro someone who knows and has used the software (like Jafo) is something to consider strongly.

https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/software/best-data-recovery-software/

Crazy price, but if Jafo says it works then it works... I'm guessing you ran the recovery of her drive from a flash drive or disc? if it was a flash used how large was the media? 

Anthony...I pulled the drive out of the machine as the box was dead...and attached it by USB and external power supply...so the process was slow...but data was recovered to an existing internal drive on my machine....then I went through it folder by folder...dumping all the system stuff eg Windows, and only keept the 'User' stuff...email, photos, docs etc...got about 15gig ...onto a 16gig USB stick to be transferred to the new computer when she gets it...

I probably need to add...this is for drives that read as unformatted...as if there's no data on them....when the MBR is lost, etc.

If a drive has mechanically failed...ie platter doesn't spin and/or drive heads do not move then the recovery cost will be measured in $1000s and doesn't always work anyway.  Surgical reconstruction of a drive's mechanics is a whole different kettle of fish...

Thanks to all for the info and help. I'm thinking I will try to see if the computer can read from a plug and play hard drive enclosure before anything else... if it can somehow read the drive, I can then get the data I need off it, or if not, maybe I can still have other options. The good news is I already found my lossless music library on another back up hard drive that I had stored and was already able to restore that, so that's a huge relief.

Looks like Wondershare is begging me to complete my order and they are offering 20% off.  Maybe I should have a copy on hand on the chance that the HDD device can be recognized with the enclosure.

If Windows shows the drive as 'there' but not formatted and allegedly empty [RAW] Wondershare will get the data.  Not all of it as some will show up as 'unknown.jpg' or similar meaning part of the file descriptor is lost.  Mine was an 'only' drive...so the OS was on it...and toast, but the User data was still there...and that was all I was after...

The enclosure arrived today and it will not boot with the drive, but when I plug and play it I get notice that the device is there as Local drive F, but the line indicating how much data exists is gone and the screen freezes.

Yes...you won't be able to boot if the MBR is corrupted and it'll read as 'empty' - no sign of anything on the drive.

If you're running 'Recoverit' it'll list the drives for you to choose and it'll start scanning....can take hours though...