i did this with my hard drive from my old laptop whose motherboard went bad.
i pulled the hard drive and connected it to my new laptop using a usb 2.0 to sata/ide cable i got online made by creative i/o. i think it cost me $25 bucks with shipping.
i then got an external hard drive case for it and it is now a 40G external hard drive. if you are challenged by all this you can get a computer shop to do it for you for $40-$50. i just wanted to do it myself.
the shop can put your old files on your new pc or onto an external hard drive, which makes better sense and worth the expense.
.bv page files that failed to publish when it crashed should still be on the hard drive if you saved them before publishing.
good luck.