Laptop hdd to usb connector (computer people question)

[loudshirt]

Hey guys I am trying to find a connector that will allow me to connect a hdd from a laptop to my desktop computer. The hdd on the laptop crashed and will not even boot. My wife has many pictures of our daughter and letters she would like me to retrieve. Also any cloud storage suggestions would be helpful as well.


Thanks

 

[rhodesbe]

Look for USB to HDD 2.5" SATA enclosure. You'll find stuff like this: $7.00 on Amazon

No guarantees it can read a crashed drive, but not a whole lot of $$$ at risk.

EDIT: this assumes your old drive is 2.5" and SATA. This is highly likely, but you'll need to confirm these details to buy the right enclosure.

 

[Commander Keen]

Are you certain it's the HDD? If it is, something like rhodesbe recommended could work, but it's doubtful.

If it's something like the motherboard then the HDD could just be removed and the data copied elsewhere without much of an issue.

As for cloud storage I use box.net the most, primarily because when they were guest starting up I got a good deal on some free storage capacity. I mostly use it on my phone, but have set up folders on my parents computers to sync everything in them to Box when a change is made. I'm certain other cloud providers (Google drive, Amazon, Microsoft one drive, etc) would have similar functionality.

 

[Coded-Dude]

if you can't get the data yourself and want to spend the money.......you can send it to a place like DriveSavers. They will get most if not all the data off of it(unless the platter is physically damaged and they still may be able to get some data).

The FIRST thing to do is to burn a linux LIVE cd, boot it up in teh laptop and see if you can browse the drive.

 

[YukonGlocker]

Do you know what type of HDD it is? Both https://www.dropbox.com/ and https://www.box.com/ have great cloud services. I prefer Dropbox for day-to-day data handling; but Box has some nice online features if you need those.

 

[loudshirt]

if you can't get the data yourself and want to spend the money.......you can send it to a place like DriveSavers. They will get most if not all the data off of it(unless the platter is physically damaged and they still may be able to get some data).

The FIRST thing to do is to burn a linux LIVE cd, boot it up in teh laptop and see if you can browse the drive.

I might try that this week. I have Unbuntu (or however you spell it) and maybe Mint on a USB stick some where.

The long and short of the HDD issue is the computer was being really really slow with a bunch of hang ups. It is a cheap laptop we got on black Friday in 2013. When I turn it on now it says something similar to HDD failure run diagnostic. When I run the diagnostic it takes about 10 seconds before it says Fail.


Thanks for the info so far guys.

 

[Blitzfike]

I use the USB to SATA interfaces all the time. Many times you can take the drive out of the failed computer and plug it into your desktop computer and run a recovery program against the USB drive and recover windows to the point that it will boot and make the old system live again. If the drive itself is going bad physically, copy all the critical docs off onto another system drive using the USB interface and go from there. Good luck, if you were closer I could help you get your stuff back. Jim

 

[Gunrunner45]

Get an Internal HDD to USB adapter. Like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter...2&keywords=internal+hard+drive+to+usb+adapter

It will allow you to plug any 2.5 or 3.5 inch SATA or IDE Internal drive into a USB port for reading. They are cheap and can be a life saver.


This should work providing the drive will actually spin up. If it won't spin up and mount, in other words the drive is dead. Then your looking at an exspensive data recovery service.

Good Luck!

 

[KOPBET]

If you don't want to buy anything you won't use again, I have everything you need to hook up the drive to USB. Sounds like the drive is toast though.

 

[ultimase]

I have a usb to sata enclosure that might work as well. Even if the drive won't boot it might be possible to find certain items though it'll take some time and maybe some specialty software.