Retrieving Data From Another HDD With OS

So a buddy from work was telling me he dropped his girlfriend's laptop and now it's working. He was wondering if I could retrieve any data from it (just the things like videos, pictures, music etc). Now my question to you guys is, if the hard drive isn't physically damage and runs fine, am I able to hook it up along with my own drives and have it connected as a storage device? Or will it be a little more complicated because it has a full operating system on it?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

If you don't change your boot order in bios,it will just act as a another HDD.MonsieurX

Great. Thank you.

if you buy something like this you dont even have to open your case

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

if you buy something like this you dont even have to open your case

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

NailedGR

Pretty handy stuff, but as I'll probably only do this once for my buddy, I'll stick to hooking it up inside my computer :P I'd definitely consider doing that if I was constantly swpaping stuff around, though.