Topic: Help with recovering data off a good hard drive in a dead PC

[datbrad]

Need some help. I have an old PC that I use just for running torrents and burning discs while I am working on other stuff on my primary computer. The old one is running Windows 98SE. I think the power supply or something finally croaked since I found it dead the other morning after it was running just fine the night before. No stability issues with the operating system prior, everything otherwise normal. It's as if it's not even plugged in, so I am guessing the power supply just died.

I don't really care about saving this PC, as I was planning to get a laptop for side stuff and was waiting for this moment to motivate me to make the move. I have some data files on the boot drive that I really want to recover, though. I was thinking I could go buy one of those DYI external enclosures made to install an internal drive and plug the old drive in, but was not sure if it would act like an external without being booted in an actual PC and still let me go into the documents folders to copy them to my winXP computer, again just as if it was an external. Hope all that makes sense.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!!

[Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B)]

Something like this shouls work:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

No need for an external enclosure if you're only going to use it once to pull your files off the drive.

You could also use that drive as a backup drive for the laptop. I like to keep a hard drive with all of my recordings off site.

[boojum]

If you have a desktop just install the old HD as a second drive.

[live2496]

When you plug it into an XP system it will autodetect the device and assign a drive letter to it.

If you do get an enclosure, get one that still supports IDE drives. There are some that are SATA only.

If you connect with a cable directly to your board, the jumper setting must match the configuration. If you connect it to a IDE cable that already has a drive you may need to re-jumper the drive as a slave. Pin settings are usually online for this. If you have a spare IDE port, then just plug it in and power up.

edit:
If you get the set mentioned by Mike B (Fatah) be careful to have the correct pin assignments if you ever connect a laptop drive. (I just read the comments section on that link).

[stantheman1976]

That adapter from newegg will work fine.  It will be just like plugging in any other USB storage device.  You can copy over whatever data you want and everything will be peachy.

[datbrad]

Thanks! +Ts