USB Broken On WD External Hard Drive

I have a Western Digital My Book Essential 1TB drive where the usb port has broken off the connector board.

I removed the outer casing and installed the drive internally on my desktop and though the drive is detected with the correct size, it does not recognize any partitions or data on the drive. There is important data stored on this drive that I would like to retrieve. Is there any way to install the drive internally without losing my data?

If not, would it be possible to use a SATA to USB adapter cord to simulate it being plugged in as an external drive or is my only option to reach the data on the drive to just replace the casing?

p/n: WDBAAF0010HBK-00

Thank You,

Reply 1 : USB Broken On WD External Hard Drive

http://forums.cnet.com/7723-7588_102-354911.html?tag=threadListing;forum-threads

Reply 2 : USB Broken On WD External Hard Drive

These options look very promising. I will try this today. I appreciate your help.