Help with recovery when hard drive is not detected

Forgive me in advance if this is a silly question...I am sort of new to drive recovery stuff (and Recuva).

This past weekend my hard drive failed--to the point where my laptop warned me that no drive existed in my drive bay. The disk doesn't spin--at all--and checking the bios and running a quick diagnostic confirmed that there was indeed, no drive being detected.

Luckily I had backed up my folders a few weeks ago (else I would be totally freaking out :) ) but there are a couple of files I'd like to retrieve because they have been updated since my last backup.

I have two drive bays in my laptop...so, after getting things downloaded and in order on my replacement drive (C:) I powered down my computer, popped the dead drive into the second bay and restarted.

After starting the Recuva wizard, it could not find the dead drive either--just my C and D (DVD) Drive locations.

So, to my silly question: Does that mean that the docs on the drive aren't recoverable because my laptop can't detect the drive? If so, are there other approaches I might be able to take?

Thanks in advance for any help anyone could provide. :)

i would be checking the BIOS settings and making sure the second bay has been set to be detected.

most BIOS settings only come from the factory with the main drive bay (C:\ drive) enabled and the other SATA ports turned off.

check that possibility out first.

If Windows Explorer cannot see the disc then Recuva cannot see it.

If Windows Disk Management can see the Disk you may be able to allocate a drive letter and then Recuva can see it.