SATA problems

Desktop crashed. Motherboard problem. Pulled the SATA drives with all my data. got a USB interface to connect the drives to the laptop. Vista recognizes the drive on the USB but can not see the drive on the computer or see the files. Do I need to install a SATA driver or something?

Welcome,
Just a wild guess

Right click computer desktop icon>manage>storage>disc magmnt. See if it is listed online, if listed at all. Choose online.

I am guessing since the laptop apparently has a SATA drive as the primary drive, I can not get the two other drives to be visible because I can not set them to "master" as the interface instructions state.