Thanks happyrock! Much appreciated!
But not sure how to connect the power cable since that is tied down and not movable.
The power cable comes from the power supply of the computer. If you slave the drive in another computer you would use the power cable from that computer. Not sure if I answered your concern here.
A couple of options for you to think about...
Sata drives are cheap nowadays. You can get a 320gb hard drive for under $50. I personally only use Seagate drives in my desktop, and only Western Digital drives in my laptops. Why the different vendors? I really don't know, its just that I like the drive offerings for these applications. Seagate, Western Digital, Hitachi, IBM, and a few others are all good manufactures, so its up to you what vendor to choose. Newegg.com has very good prices and is where I shop for all my computer hardware.
HERE'S a page full of Sata hard drives that should work fine in your computer.
As for data recovery, I really don't have any idea what a shop would charge. But, besides slaving the drive in another computer, you could also purchase a Sata USB external hard drive enclosure and install your hard drive into and read it on whatever computer you're typing on right now via a USB port. Newegg also carries
MANY offerings. Just make sure you purchase an USB enclosure for a Sata 3.5" drive. The first Vantec hit for $24 should work fine for your purposes if you choose to go this route.
Personally, I would rather purchase a $24 enclosure to see if I access the drive first rather than take it into a shop.
Another option is to download and run your hard drive manufactures diagnostic software...normally free.
CAUTION: You must be sure to use the correct software so you don't wipe whatever data is on the drive. If you want to try this, I can help you locate the software if you let me know what manufacture hard drive you have. Since you don't have a floppy, you would need to be able to burn a CD so you can run the program on the Dell... providing the manufacture offers software for CDs, which most do nowadays.
Ideally, you should try to slave the drive in another computer. If you know someone that can slave the drive for you in their computer, that would be good. If not, a USB enclosure is the next best thing. And then, if those two options aren't available, then run the diagnostic software. I tend to always want to protect the clients data and so I never run diagnostics first just in case something goes wrong. Me, I'm just paranoid that way when it comes to data. What you do is of course up to you.
By the way, did you ever try swapping the Sata cable with another cable, or at least swap to another Sata channel? You might want to try that first.