Question : external drive shows up as uninitialized

i'm trying to get the data off my friend's hdd.  i pulled the drive out of her imac and put it in an external SATA case, and connected it to my pc.  the drive shows up as unitialized.

i have used tools, such as Rescue Kit Express to fix drives with blown partition tables.  but ... i am not too familiar with the structure of a mac hdd.  i think it's FAT, but i'm not sure.

i am about to try Knoppix...  
other ideas?

Answer : external drive shows up as uninitialized

Mac hard drives are either HFS or HFS+ format and Windows does not read without software. You could try Macdrive. It has a free trial but not sure if it is just time limited.

A live Linux CD like Knoppix would work too.

http://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive/