Regaining access to my old hdd

So a fwe years ago now, I had a laptop, because it was the only prompter in the house I was living in I let everyone  use it, this meant the thino ended up being riddled with viruses and alsorts. Then one night in a alcohol fuelled need to sort it out I cleared all the viruses then noticed I had about 200000 connections, I added a password and they wall disappeared I was then filled with so much pleasure and satisfaction at having gifted the issues I went to sleep. Upon waking I realised I had forgotten the password. Since then I have not used the laptop, but have pulled it apart and have it in pieces in an attempt to build a custom media pc (now I am thinking router or something else but I want to make use of it.) the thing is I had a lot of files and docs i would love to retrieve from this drive. How would mall all suggest I go about doing this. 

Oh yeah I lost the charger pack so I also need some way of hacking it to have constant power for the future mod.

Im guessing you had some version of windows on it? 

You could get a HDD case (10-20$), and hook it up via usb, firewire, etc and gain access to it. Just make sure you dont boot the OS(operaiting system) from that drive), i hope you didnt encrypt it with some software, its a bit more complicated then.

 

If you must boot the windows from that harddrive, then.

You can get a pice of software to crack open the old WIndows Password, or remove it

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/tp/passrecovery.htm

I usually use Offline NT password and registry editor, others should do the trick as-well.