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My Compaq desktop PC died on me in 2008 and I don't recall what happened. I believe my hard drive may have died, but this is a self diagnosis and I could be wrong. Now I would like to try and retrieve my pictures and information off of it before recycling it. I hate to pay alot of money to retrieve data and pics, but I also don't want to trash it or recycle it until I've tried getting my things off the drive.
What tips do you have? I recently bought a 2 TB portable hard drive. Should I try using that to extract the data? Thanks in advance for your help !
Yes, but my old hard drive is internal, not external, so I'm not certain what you mean by connect up to the new desktop??? I could certainly try setting up the old desktop and trying to see if it boots, but due to time constraints and counter space, I haven't done it yet .
Quote:
Originally Posted by jaypee
Do you have a desktop PC now you can connect your old HDD to to see whether it spins up?
Open the case on the old computer, when you're looking at it the panel on the left side comes off but it might be the right. It might just be some thumb screws and a latch etc. They are usually very easy to take off, if you open it and you see a metal plate it's the wrong side. Towards the front of the computer is the bays, you'll have a CD drive up top, maybe a floppy or flash drive in the middle and the hard drive will be mounted near the bottom. It's going to have two cables hooked to it. One is for power and the other one is for communication. The power cord will be easy to identify because it will have a few brightly colored wires that are different colors.
Disconnect both cables. Remove the drive from the computer. How you do that depends, it might have some sort of quick latching system or be screwed in. Also remove the communications cable if it's SATA, and will look like this. If you have a different cable like a ribbon post back:
Shut down and disconnect the power cord for the new computer. Open the case, before doing anything further touch a metal part of the case. This will safely discharge any static electricity so you don't discharge it into any electronics. Find the drive and follow the communications cable from the drive to the moherboard, again the cable will probably be SATA. The SATA cable will be plugged into a SATA port on the motherboard and there should be more of them right next to it. Plug the SATA cable you took out of the other computer into one these ports.
From there it depends but first you're going to need to find an unused power cable inside the case, there will probably be an extra plug on the power wire from the hard drive in the computer. You could for example lay the old HDD on a piece of cardboard near the computer, the only thing that matters here is that you can plug both the power ad SATA cable into it. You can go all out and mount it properly in bay if you want.
Once you have the power and SATA cable connected turn on the computer. Check "My Computer", the drive should be listed and you should be able to browse the files. Find the files you want and try copying the files to your new computer. You may run into permission issues and get an accessed denied error, if so post back.
If the drive works and you want to keep it, once you have moved all the files you want to your new drive right click the drive while in My Computer and select format. Of course you will want to mount it properly in the computer case.
If the drive is not viewable in My Comoputer or you're getting any errors accessing it there is an old trick here that might work. You put the drive in freezer bag for few hours and freeze it. Don't laugh becsue it may work. If you get to that p[oint though you are going to want to be prepared for any issues because it may only work a few times, you have a limited amount of time to get everything copied and/or how many times it might work.
Last edited by thecoalman; 08-24-2013 at 03:57 AM..
Yes, but my old hard drive is internal, not external, so I'm not certain what you mean by connect up to the new desktop??? I could certainly try setting up the old desktop and trying to see if it boots, but due to time constraints and counter space, I haven't done it yet .
Well, how were you planning to get data off the old drive w/o powering it up and connecting it to a computer?
What is the make/model of the old and the new PC?
You'll probably have more luck setting it up as an external drive through USB if the old computer is "old". It may not have SATA connections, and the new PC may not have PATA.
Using USB means you won't have to open the new computer.
Okay since I expected a different response, I am trying to get my head around your responses. I thought I'd be told to try and power it up and use some special software to retrieve the data. If that didn't work, then take it to a highly recommended computer repair place, but don't pay more than $XX amount and the place will do XYZ to see if the data is still there.
Taking the old hard drive out and putting it in a case etc. "might" be out of my expertise . I'll have to think on this some more, unless someone has a software recommendation to add to their response???
So the old HDD is still in the old PC? I think the assumption I had was that you had already removed the old drive.
You can try to boot it and if it does boot, you can connect your external drive to your old PC and transfer data over.
If it doesn't boot, then it's a matter of troubleshooting to see why -- i.e. is it a hw or sw problem? does the drive even power and spin up?
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