With the drive hooked up to the test PC, look to see if it is recognized in the BIOS. 
 Or alternatively, use your USB adapter, then go into computer management (right-click 
my computer, click manage) and expand "storage" then select disk management.  See 
if you are able to "see" the device listed.

If the computer is recognizing the device but you can not get a drive letter, or 
do not see a valid partition on the drive, then you probably have a case where the 
original PC uses a non-standard drive geometry in the BIOS.

It is rare, and is usually a problem on much older PCs.  In order to get your operating 
system to recognize the drive properly, you will have to go into the BIOS settings 
on the original PC, and record the actual settings (heads, cylinders, sectors, LBA 
mode, etc.) and then manually set those same settings in your BIOS so that the geometry 
is identical.

Then the partition will be recognize properly and you will get a drive letter.  I 
must warn you that if you try to do anything on the drive with the improper drive 
geometry set, you will destroy data.

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