Not sure why you chose to focus on that in replying to me. I don't care about the enclosure part. Others gave that advice. My advice was about imaging that drive before you remove it from the system or try to repair it, before any of the data is modified in any way. You can also verify the drive integrity at that time. That process doesn't require an enclosure. I only said the idea of purring the drive into an enclosure is a good one, since korniceman3000 seemed to be leaning towards doing that. But you don't need an enclosure to create a drive image. You just need a place to store that image.

That said, you can get enclosures in the $10 range, so it's not a huge investment even if you never use it again. If the data you're trying to preserve is worth anything at all, $10 is the least of your concerns.