Can I use my old laptop's Hard drive with a PC?

Hello,
i bought myself an apple laptop in summer 2004. I stored a year's worth of files, projects, pictures, docs, songs... The motherboard died 4 months ago.
Fast forward... I now use a PC (don t ask why) and I need to recover my files. I bought a container for 3 inch hard drives. It said it was mac and pc compatible, plug and play style with an usb cord. There is no software to install, it was supposed to work like a USB key. however, the PC didn t recognize it. I thought maybe it s because the file format is different on PC and WinXP, or maybe Tiger locked the hard drive... I don t have access to another ibook or powerbook to connect it to, so any other hints from you guys would be most helpful.
Thanks.
a 2004 12 ibook Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Yes, you're right about the format of the disk. Out of the box, Windows XP can't read a Mac formatted-hard disk. You have two options... One, find another Mac to plug your hard drive into and see if you can't burn some of your files to CDs. A CD that the Finder burns should be both Mac and PC compatible. Or, two, purchase some software that will allow your PC to read a Mac formatted disk (the disk is probably formatted as a "Mac OS Extended" disk). It's $50, but will allow your PC to read a Mac-formatted hard drive.
-Doug

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I read of all the things that go wrong restoring Time Machine backups.. particularly stupid things like mail, photo libraries don't go back.. etc. And looking through the incredible number of issues people have here, when their Mac finally takes a dive how hard it is to restore.
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A product like clonezilla, Free linux boot cd.
http://lifehacker.com/5078397/clonezilla-backs-up-and-restores-your-disks
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Can I use my old laptop's Hard drive with a PC?

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