Connecting External Harddrive to Laptop

Hey guys!

Our main computer finally died. Can't even boot up from a disk. Anyhow most important vids, music, pix, docs, etc. is on an external hardrive, a Maxtor. BUT I tried to attach it to the laptop [which we're using until we can buy a new computer] there were no ports that it would fit in!!! The laptop is an old XPS but it has Vista.

Is there an alternate way to get the data from the external hardrive to the laptop? An adapter or something? It looks like a USB port but it doesn't fit into the laptop's USB port.

Thanks for any advice!

Marci