How to get info off unallocated HDD

My niece had a disaster with her laptop when a cat piddled on it. now I'm trying to get some photos off the drive.So I've put the drive into a USB caddy and it shows up in Disk Management as Disk 3 and Unallocated. If I right-click on it I get New Partition, Properties and Help. What next? Is it possible to allocate a letter to this drive? Is it possible to get her photos off?
TIA.
PS. I don't know what happened to the cat..

mickzer.

 

Thanks Tony,
I tried that but all I seemed to get was the Recovery Partition. There doesn't seem to be any more files on the disk but she says there should be loads of photos on it. Her brother had first try at it and I don't know what he did. Is there anything else I can try. Thanks again.
BTW: The laptop was ruined. All she wants are her photos.

mickzer.

 

My suggestion is to go to the manufacturer of the HDD's website. Get their testing utilities, actually there might be testing utilities and drive setup utilities, look for utilities for the MBR (Master Boot Record). You should be able to save a copy of the current MBR, then run an "update" of the MBR. That may get the partition back.

Investigate a program called Undelete, although I have not tried it. I am not sure if it is freeware.

Matt