How to access files from an old hard drive?

In my recording studio, we had a Dell XPS 400 that was rendered useless back in 2008 when the motherboard fried. The CPU has since been collecting dust but I recently took out the hard drive in hopes that I could salvage it. I put it in another computer and it booted successfully, however, I can't remember the user password nor the administrator password just to log in and there is no guest account set up. Can't even log in with Safe Mode. Would getting a SATA to USB adaptor allow me to access the files just as if it were a flashdrive?