Migrating Information in Target Disk Mode Wiped out hard drive

I just helped a friend install Leopard on her new MacBook (it came with a drop in disk of Leopard). After the install, I started her previous 3-year old MacBook in target disk mode to migrate over old system settings. During the migration, the new MacBook froze up and forced me to do a hard restart. After restarting the computer, it would no longer recognize the old MacBook that was still in Target Disk Mode.
After awhile I finally decided to pull the hard drive out of the old MacBook and hook it up to my WiebeTech DriveDock. I now get a disk insertion error telling me that the drive is not readable. I have tried DriveGenius, but I cannot rebuild or repair the drive because it doesn't even pop up.
Has anyone heard of the migration assistance wiping out the drive you were attempting to migrate from? And also, does anyone know of a way to fix this?

She backed up with Retrospect a couple weeks ago, so not much would be lost if I wasn't able to resurrect this drive. The feeling of accomplishment from tackling this problem is the only truly important thing that would be lost.

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