If for some reason your notebook fails to boot and you need to access data on the hard drive (I assume there is nothing wrong with the hard drive itself), you can use an external USB enclosure. This method is very simple and could be very useful when you need an emergency access to your data on the hard drive.
First of all you’ll have to buy an external USB enclosure for notebook hard drives. These enclosures are inexpensive and usually you can buy them in any local computer store. You also can find a wide variety of external enclosures on the Internet. Make sure to buy a correct one, enclosures for ATA and SATA hard drives are different (the connector inside the case will be different). Usually the enclosure includes the case and the USB cables.
Now remove the hard drive from the laptop. For this example I’m using an ATA hard drive.
Open up the enclosure case and connect the hard drive to the connector inside. After that insert the hard drive into the case.
After everything is assembled, you are ready to connect this device to any working computer (notebook or PC). The enclosure cable usually has two USB connectors on one end, make sure both of them are connected to the computer. You don’t need any external power supply for the enclosure because the hard drive gets power through USB ports. If the computer you are connecting the enclosure to runs Windows 2000 or higher, you will not need any device drivers. As soon as you connect the enclosure to the computer, the external hard drive should be detected and recognized automatically. After that the external hard drive will appear in My Computer and you can access it as any other hard drive in the computer.
If you are getting “Access denied” message when you are trying to access your files on the hard drive, you’ll have to take ownership of a file or folder.
My previous post explains how to connect a notebook hard drive to a desktop PC via IDE hard drive adapter.
If you find this article useful, please consider making a donation to the author. Thank you!
May 17th, 2007 at 10:57 am
To take that concept one step further, you might consider a Data Transfer kit that is capable of doing a full identical copy. CMS offers a kit that can mirror from an existing drive to a new larger drive. This saves a lot of time re-loading the operating system and apps and gets you onto a larger hard drive in less time. You can use the transfer encloser to access files from the old drive if need be.
June 28th, 2007 at 4:14 am
I was wondering if I will still be able to put the harddrive back into my laptop after I have transferred all my files to another PC using an USB enclosure, because I’m having trouble booting and I have no clue how to access my files otherwise. My laptop is a Acer Aspire 5002WLMi.
July 19th, 2007 at 7:40 am
I’m so glad you posted pics with this post!
I was having trouble extracting data from a (cannot boot into Windows) notebook and was suggested to attach hdd to USB casing.
July 27th, 2007 at 5:22 pm
OK so i did this and im having a small problem.. when i go to access the different parts of the hard drive only the guest and defult profiles from the old OS will open. the place where all of my files were will not open.. i have a feeling it is because it had a password. is there some program i could download or buy to allow me to type in my password and access it? i know it is not corroupted because it works when the laptop has power.. please help!
August 30th, 2007 at 6:29 am
Thanks for the article, very helpful!!!
One tiny question though, my notebook HDD is a ATA drive (the drive from my now dead VAIO PCG F809K) and I’m finding it hard to locate a external enclosure for this format. Instead, all the enclosures available to buy (AKA in stock) seem to be SATA or IDE format. Would IDE format work with ATA as I think?
August 31st, 2007 at 8:03 pm
IDE=ATA=PATA=same format and connector
September 3rd, 2007 at 8:50 am
I have the opposite issue — I want to take (recent) data from the hard drive I removed from the dead desktop and transfer the files to my working laptop. Is there a simple IDE to USB sort of contraption that would ease the pain of this? Or will I be able to use a Data Transfer Kit to recover the files when the new desktop arrives? What worries me about THAT is the new desktop is an all-in-one system with the screen and PC workings combined. Help. Please. Please. — Thank you!
September 18th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
This guide was great. I followed all the steps, but here’s my problem:
Now that I’ve got it connected, Windows (vista) insists that “the disk in drive H must be formatted before use”
Formatting, obviously, would defeat the purpose here. Is there anything I can do? The notebook HD was from an XP computer, and I *think* I used NTFS formatting, though I don’t know if that makes a difference.
September 18th, 2007 at 9:47 pm
ST,
Try connecting the hard drive to a XP machine.
I think this message indicates a problem with the file system on your notebook hard drive. If you are getting the same error message on XP machine, I would suggest using professional data recovery service.
September 26th, 2007 at 4:40 am
I am having the same issue at ST and I tried the XP also and got the same message. And there are no other ideas to access the drive? There surely must be or how else can the professional service people get in to the drive?
September 27th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Cat,
You can try using GetDataBack software made by Runtime software. Really good stuff. I think you’ll be able to find your data if you do raw data scan.
But before you buy any software, try accessing the drive with Knoppix (live Linux CD). Knoppix is free and I find it VERY helpful when Windows tools are useless. Boot the computer from the Knoppix CD and click on the drive with data, see if Knoppix can recognize the file structure and mount the drive. If it can, burn data on a CD/DVD or transfer to an external drive with FAT32.
That’s my best guess.
September 29th, 2007 at 11:56 am
In an attempt to recover data from a hard drive in a laptop with a motherboard problem, I tried an external USB enclosure and so far have had no success. I installed the laptop drive in the enclosure and connected it to a desktop running Windows XP. The indicator light on the enclosure came on immediately when I plugged it into a USB port, and it sounded like the hard drive was spinning. But the desktop gave no indication that it was seeing the laptop/USB drive after many, many minutes. No messages of any kind – errors or otherwise. The same thing happened when I tried to connect the USB enclosure to another laptop.
One thing I did not do was mess with the jumper on the laptop hard drive that sets it to be master, slave, etc. Could the jumper setting affect the ability of the host PC to detect the USB drive?
September 30th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
Jay53,
Most external USB enclosure cables have two USB connectors on one end, as it shown on the last picture. Make sure you plug both USB connectors into the computer. One USB port does not provide enough power to fire up the hard drive and it will not work properly. So, make sure to use both USB ends.
Definitely try playing with the Master/Slave jumper if you have it installed on your hard drive. First, remove the jumper and test if the hard drive is detected. Second, set the jumper to master and try again.
From my experience, this setup should work without any jumper.
October 1st, 2007 at 11:16 pm
My laptop stopped working about a week ago. The lights turn on but nothing comes on the screen, apparently something happened with the motherboard. I have alot of information I need off of the harddrive, and do not have the money to get the laptop fixed. I bought two different external enclosures, but neither of them will connect to my Harddrive. (which is a serial ATA) I’m afraid to buy another one, because the last two, which said were for serial ata’s, did not connect. Any suggestions?
October 2nd, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Ashley,
I don’t known how I can help you. If you buy external serial ATA enclosures for notebook hard drives they should work with serial ATA notebook hard drives. Make sure you are buying a correct one. Take your hard drive to a local computer shop and show it to the salesman.
October 4th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
For Ashley- I had a similar situation with my Dell laptop hard drive and the enclosure that I bought. At first, it seemed that the two were incompatible. However, after doing some research on the web I figured out that the hard drive had a removable adapter already attached to it. The adapter gave the drive a “female” interface. By pulling this plastic piece off, the pins were revealed that allowed the drive to connect to the enclosure. Check to see if your facing the same situation.
October 4th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Now, on to my question. After fitting my laptop’s hard drive into the enclosure and connecting the USB cable to a desk top computer, the drive lights up, spins up and the desktop recognizes that a usb device has been attached. It even recognizes the model name and number (dara-218000 appears). However, the drive doesn’t appear as an icon in “My Computer”. Therefore, I can’t yet open the drive and access the files. Any suggestions?
October 10th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
I have an older IDE hard drive I would like to put into an enclosure. The laptop it came out of was using Windows98 in FAT32. I am now running Windows XP NTCS. Will the newer system read the older file structure if used as a external slave drive?
October 13th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
conchquest,
1. Make sure the laptop hard drive is partitioned and formatted. You can do it through the Disk Management in the Computer Management. Right click on My Computer and then click on Manage, go to the Disk Management. Can you see your USB hard drive in there?
2. Most USB enclosures have cable with two USB connectors on one end. Make sure both USB connectors are plugged, otherwise the hard drive inside the enclosure will not get enough power and might not work properly.
October 13th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
Randall,
There should be no problem. XP supports both NTFS and FAT32 file system.
October 30th, 2007 at 4:56 pm
I’m trying to replace a hard drive on a Dell Inspiron 6000 with a larger hard drive. I’m using Norton Ghost 12.0 to do a “copy drive” with an external USB drive. The laptop recognizes the external drive and assigns it a letter and the copy procedure completes successfully, but once I’ve placed the larger drive in the laptop, it will only boot up to the “Windows is starting up” screen and then freezes. I’ve tried everything I can think of, but still can’t copy the operating system to the new drive. I think it may have something to do with the external USB drive, but I’m not sure. Anyone have any suggestions? I’ve done this exact same thing on a desktop and it was a breeze, but this laptop is a different cat.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
I have a Toshiba Satellite 1905-S301 laptop. Few weeks back when I started it, a dialog box opened up saying there is some problem with the registry. I have tried connecting my laptop hard drive using USB enclosure to my new Mac Book Pro, however it mentions that the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer due to unrecognizable filesystem. My question is if I connect this hard drive to Windows XP pc, will I be able to transfer the important files then? Its hard to understand that the Desktop will have access to the files which originally require administrator password to log into. I seek some advise on this. Thank you.
November 26th, 2007 at 12:49 am
rahul,
Yes, you should be able to transfer files if you connect your hard drive to another PC.
You’ll have to take ownership over files located on the external hard drive. You can do that when you login to the PC as an administrator.
December 5th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
Check out this adapter:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/.....6812119152
Its cheaper than buying a usb enclosure and much quicker to attach any IDE/SATA 2.5,3.5,5.25 drive. I wish I would have found this adapter years ago!!!!
December 12th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I removed my hard drive from a Dell and bought the USB enclosure and was able to use it to store my data. But sometimes when I connect to my PC it makes this weird tapping noise and the PC doesn’t connect to the external Disk. Also sometimes in the middle of doing something it gives an error that “Windows failed to write….” What could be wrong?
December 15th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Hi there.
I face the same problem too but my problem is i dont know how to “stick” my SATA notebook hdd into the external enclosure. May you show me how to “stick” it using pictures? Thanks
February 20th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
My laptop recently crashed and as far as I know the HD is still in usable shape, I’m trying to find the correct enclosure device for my HD, I have a Dell Inspiron 1150 but have not found an enclosure yet, I already have to return one.
February 21st, 2008 at 4:37 am
Mike,
Take your laptop hard drive to a local computer store and show it to the store attendant. They will help you to find the correct enclosure.
I believe this laptop has a regular IDE laptop hard drive installed. There shouldn’t be any problem finding the correct enclosure for your hard drive.
February 28th, 2008 at 11:00 am
I recently upgrade my PS3 20GB to 120GB. I purchased a SATA USB enclosure. It worked with 120GB but no the 20GB. I put the 20GB back to PS3 and it finds it. I put it to the USB enclosure and connect to either laptop or desktop with no success. It look likes PC does not detect any usb connection. If the drive is bad, at least the PC will told me. I download Gparted Live CD and it does not detect any external HDD. I know the USB enclosure is working since I use other HDD and PC finds it. I have no clues, please help.
March 22nd, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I have an old Toshiba laptop with a dead lcd display. I want to hook it up to my new Dell laptop lcd display in order to clean out all the files before I get rid of it. How can I connect the old laptop to display on my new laptop lcd?
March 24th, 2008 at 9:05 am
I followed your instructions about buying and using a USB enclosure for notebook hard drives. When I turned it on my desktop did recognize the new hardware and installed drivers for it. But now I can’t find the drive under “my computer.” It appears that it might have something to do with partioning my hard drive (which I don’t know how to do). Desktop uses Vista and hard drive is from an older Dell laptop using XP. Can you help?
March 24th, 2008 at 11:14 am
I put my toshiba MK4032GAX (that crashed twice) in a standard enclosure (Aikuo AI-EN2501).
After I plugged it to my computer, the computer seems to detect a USB storage drive but I can’t see any hard drive.
I stupidly thought this might be due to a wrong plugg inside the enclosure so I flipped the drive and replugged th enclusure.
This time, the light blinked several times and I started smelling an electronical-burning smell…
I have two questions:
1- why did my HD not work properly the first time
2- what did I probably lose: the enclosure (this would be OK), or the HD (this would be bad)
Thanks a lot for your help
Jug
March 26th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Diane,
You cannot output video on another laptop LCD screen, but you can on an external monitor (LCD or CRT). Connect your monitor to the VGA port on the Toshiba laptop (it’s D-shaped and has 15 holes) and restart the laptop. If video doesn’t appear on the external monitor, use Fn + one of the F-keys in the top row in order to switch video output from internal to external.
March 26th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Peter,
It’s possible that there is a problem with the partition/file structure or with the hard drive. You can try this. Left-click on the start menu (Window icon in the lower left corner) and then right-click on Computer. Click on Manage. Now select (left-click) Disk Management.
If your external had drive was detected by the computer, you should see this hard drive in Disk Management.
Normally, if there is nothing wrong with the hard drive, it will say something like this: (C:) 55.89GB NTFS Healthy etc…
What do you see in your case?
March 26th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
Jug,
Apparently there was a problem withe the file structure or with the hard drive itself. See comment 34.
I hope the enclosure. The only way to find out is testing it with another enclosure. I really think that you burnet the enclosure, not the hard drive.
March 29th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Hello,
I bought an external HD enclosure to put my other laptop HD into, because the laptop would no loger boot and I need the info off of the HD.
When I view the disk drives in the device manager the external drive sows up. However the Drive letters are the same on the external as they are on this computer. I have tried going to the Compter Management / Disk Management to change the deive letters but the external does not show up here.
How can I change the Drvie letters of the external so I can transfer the files?
Thank for the help.
Jon
March 31st, 2008 at 8:02 am
Which external USB enclosure do you recommend to remove data from a Dell Inspiron 300M hard drive? Thanks
April 9th, 2008 at 11:09 am
got a external drive that i have connected to a xp laptop by a usb adapter cable i put it in a external drive case and it does not show
up at all under the drives in xp device mangager though it spins and lights up – the drive in the laptop keep showing up as aragon i think it may be a curpt xp how can i get this drive to be seen so i can wipe it clean and start over. – email me at above address if you have any ideas thanks.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
can i upgrade size of my inteneral harddrive in my dell inspirion1100. say fron 20gb to 100gb and still keep it internal. whats all the avantages of using these external drive?
jack
April 9th, 2008 at 9:31 pm
pretorian,
Can you see this drive in Computer Management – Disk Management?
Apparently the drive will not appear in My Computer because it has no file structure or the fils structure is corrupted. Before you can use the drive you’ll have to partition and format it in Disk Managment.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Jack,
If your laptop can handle 20GB hard drive, most likely it will handle 100GB hard drive without any problem.
You can safe all personal files (pictures, music, documents, etc…) on the external hard drive and use them on multiple computers, just connect this drive to any computer using USB cable and access it through My Computer. The external hard drive is very handy if you use more then one computer.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
“Operating system not found” on my acer aspire 4520 setup. how to install operating system on hdd using external USB enclosure? Please teach me, thanks!!
April 19th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
yebs,
I’m not sure what you are asking about. If you receive “Operating system not found” message on startup, try reinstalling OS from the recovery disc. Reinstalling OS will erase everything on the hard drive. Before reinstalling OS you can make a backup using external USB enclosure.
May 18th, 2008 at 11:45 am
My toshiba satellite laptop is no longer bootable and I needed to recover data from the hard drive. I bought an USB 2.0 enclosure and followed the steps as mentioned above. Once the USB cable is connected to a desktop running Windows XP, I can see an additional drive listed in the explorer. However, I cannot seem to access this drive. When I click on it, my whole system freezes and the CPU utilization spikes upto 100%. Even after leaving the system in that state for over an hour, I still cannot access the laptop drive.
Any idea whats going on ? The laptop drive is abt 80GB.
May 18th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
SR,
Apparently the drive is damaged badly. I think you’ll have to take it to a professional data recovery specialist.
May 24th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I removed a 60.0 GB Fujistu hard drive from my laptop..
How do I know if it’s SATA or ATA or whatever (so I can buy the right enclosure)?
June 5th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I am also hoping to recover files from a dead laptop. The computer acknoledges the USB device, hard disc device but the drove does not show up in My Computer. It does show up in Disc Manager as Active and Healthy, but with no associated drive letters. Right clicking on the drive in disc manager the only availiable option is “remove this partition.” Will selecting that option that delete my data?
Also, can I boot another laptop directly from the USB HD/enclosure?
June 5th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Jeff,
ATA hard drives have two rows of pins as you can see on one of the picture above. SATA hard drives have two flat connectors.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Kenn Johnston,
DO NOT DELETE THE PARTITION, it will make the data recovery process even harder.
If the hard drive will not show up in My Computer, apparently the file structure on the drive is corrupted. You’ll have to use data recovery software.
You can try this data recovery software. I haven’t tried it myself yet, but it’s free.
June 22nd, 2008 at 11:08 am
I am having similar issues. My Dell laptop crashed earlier this week giving me a “No boot sector of hard drive,” message when I tried to reboot after receiving the blue screen of death. After reading similar forums, I purchased a USB adapter for my old HD. I’ve attached the HD to another functioning laptop via the USB, but it is not listed under “My computer.” Actually tried this with 2 different computers- one with vista and one with xp. Again, after visiting other forums, I went to the Disk management section and “initialized” the drive, however, I still cannot find it anywhere else on the computer to access the files. As well as being listed under Drive maint, it’s also listed when I select to “safely remove hardware.” I’m not the most computer savvy person but was hoping to save myself the $100 I was quoted for professional data retrieving service. However, after wasting most of my weekend toying with it, I’m starting to think shelling out the cash may be easier. This is my last ditch effort. Any suggestions on how to access the data on the drive?
2 other quick points: 1) I hear the drive spinning when connected and 2)there are 4 other prongs on the HD which are not encorporated into the adapter, could that be a problem?
June 24th, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Dan,
Apparently, the file structure had been corrupted and because of that you cannot see the hard drive in my computers. There is a chance to recover your data by using special data recovery software. Most data recovery software are not free, but I know one for witch you don’t have to pay – PC Inspector. You can try scanning the hard drive with that recovery software. I haven’t tried this utility myself, so I cannot tell you how good it is.
August 11th, 2008 at 12:29 am
10x for the great article!
September 29th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
I have Hitachi HDD for my laptop.I am not able to find pins on this drive to connect it with hardisk enclouser.Please help me how to connect it with enclouser
September 29th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Mandeep,
If you cannot see pins, apparently you have a SATA hard dive. You’ll have to find enclosure for SATA drives.
October 9th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Hello all, I’m having some serious issues with my Lappy HD.
Firstly when i plug it in it takes a while to register in my OS (XP Home). The when it does my computer freezes until I unplug it. This all came about when one day the Laptop decided to bluescreen every time it got turned on and then it rebooted. Nothing would work in terms of booting into windows. Not even Safe Mode.
I tried using the Filerecovery program but that wouldn’t let me into the Documents and Settings folder to gain access to My Documents. (This is where all the files I need to retrieve are located).
The Lappy HD is an ATA NTFS Formatted drive. For reference I’ve tried a different Lappy HD and that works fine.
Any light would be gratefully apprecciated! Thanks for your time.
Chris.
October 12th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Som.Gii,
Are you getting an error message trying to access My Documents? What happens when you try to access My Documents?
October 22nd, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I accidently killed my laptop a few days ago when I spilt a pint of water all over it.
I would like to sell the HD which is still working, but it still has all my data on it (some of which includes passwords, etc).
How do I safely wipe the HD using an external USB enclosure so the buyer cannot access/get back my files?
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I cannot boot up into windows so before I do a destruction recover I would like to take all my pictures and files off my hard drive. I bought a case enclosure and hooked it up to another computer, but cannot find my pictures or word documents. I only found one file with pictures. Are they hidden somewhere?
Help
October 28th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
I recieved the SATA USB enclosure today and put my laptop HDD into it.
Windows XP came up with a message saying “New hardware found; USB mass storage device” and about 60 seconds later it said;
“A probem occurred during hardware installation. Your new hardware might not work properly.”
I can’t see the HDD anywhere in My computer or Disk Management.
I can see it show up in Device manager under USB controllers as “USB mass storage device” but only for about 60 seconds then it disappears. Also, when I right click on USB mass storage device in the device manager and click on properties > driver, it says that a driver is NOT installed.
Do you think the reason why it is not showing up in My computer/disk management is because Windows XP has failed to install a driver for it/ recognise it?
I don’t understand why it isn’t showing up, please help.
October 29th, 2008 at 6:15 am
i have laptop hdd with case but hardisk is not working since 2 days suggest me how cn i recover my data
November 3rd, 2008 at 8:26 pm
i bought laptop and in my bluetooth is not working i do’nt not have a blue tooth hardware in it.many times i tried to fix it..but error cames up bluetooth hardware not found.can give me any suugessttion fr this thnks and you are othe all stuff is oke
November 5th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Wish I had found this sooner.
I discovered this process myself after much labor.
I was able to recover hard drive I would have normally replace an thrown away. Imagine that.
November 13th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
Thanks, Saved me more than $300 to have an “expert” access this drive, and now I have an external HD!
November 25th, 2008 at 2:09 am
I had a same problem with my laptop hard drive but it I can’t access. It is not showing in my computer file. Sometime the small icon pop ups that is connected but it disappears. The 2 USB cables are connected. I have Builders XP professional on computer.
What now?
Thanks for the answer.
Istvan
November 26th, 2008 at 4:31 am
Hi – Im having the exact same problem as 64 Istvan. Is there any that Im not doing? Ive connected the hard drive as per instruction. Many thanks!
November 30th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
is there any way that any one can show the pin outs for a laptop hard drive, like the main pins that are use?
December 5th, 2008 at 11:52 am
You have provided information with great deal, i really like tips and trick section. I wish i had my laptop with me which I broke 1 year ago, wasn’t working due to some power issue.
December 13th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I bought an enclosure and it worked perfectly fine the first two times I used it. After that though, every time I connected it to the desktop it would freeze my computer. While the USB cord is attached to the desktop nothing works and nothing happens; however, once I remove the USB cord everything runs normally again.
Any thoughts or suggestions?
Thanks,
Kevin
January 17th, 2009 at 10:04 am
i have a 120Gb hardrive from my laptop that I already put into a usb drive but my 2 pcs and my laptop recognize it as a 6GB hardrive. Why?
January 19th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Number 69, Possible because of a FAT setting or older computer/windows if they are old, its unlikley u can use the entire hdd expecially if it works fine on some other pc,
Number 68 Try this
go to start then run, type in CMD
in CMD type
set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 Then press enter then type
start devmgmt_msc then pres enter again, device manager will open, go to view then show hidden devices, uninstall all greyed/ghosted hard drives and USB drives, then reboot with the drive connected, if windows fails to load do it wil it disconnected, then conect once loaded, if it still freeses, i may suggest the easiest soloution being a reinstall of windows
January 19th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Often problems with this and other USB devices not being seen can be fixed by reinstalling windows, before you do that backup everythig and try the system restore utility first, its under accessories in the startmenu.
Reinstalling is not as daunting as most people thing, i do it for a living……..
February 22nd, 2009 at 7:56 pm
I have a hard drive (IDE) which I used for my Windows XP desk top as a storage drive on my DELL. One day it did not boot up and no method I tried couln’t get it to boot and I would really like to access it for the last time so I can retrieved the precious photos and important files I stored in the drive. Can this USB enclosure method be use to extract my files out of that unbootable Maxtor drive?
March 26th, 2009 at 9:50 pm
You could try switching the jumper on your hard drive to slave and connect another hard drive that can boot into an operating system and have it’s jumper set to master (sometimes will have master with slave present) connect them both to one ide cable and turn on your computer. you may need to go into the bios to get your mother board to recognize the drives. most mother boards will automaticly have detected your hardrive settings. go into cmos in the bios and have it do an auto search for your hardrives if it does not already recognize them. If it comes back as nothing is ther you will need to take the harddrive out and look at it to find the hard drive properties that the cmos will ask for if you do a manual setting.
you should be able to turn on your computer and load into your operating system and transfer those precious files from your old hard drive (currently set as slave) to the new one (currently set as master)
let me know if this helps.
If not I’ll find something else for you to try.
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:57 am
Hola,
Thank you very much for this web site. It’s been of big help to initially gain access to my “lost” data in my harddrive.
I just want to collaborate with this web site and all the people strugling to have access to the hard drive once connected to antoher PC. I had the same trouble, the problem was the partition was damaged and then its imposible for the new PC to detect it (you don’t see anithing in MiPC). Well the solutions for all your troubles is this free software:
Partion find and mount. (http://findandmount.com/)
With the free version you’ll be able to detect lost partitions give them an extension (ie E:) and automatically you will see them in MiPc and you can just copy your data you need. There is a pro version but I am sure you don’t need it..
In my case the boot partition was damaged and I couldn’t fix it with partition find and mount. Anyway I could saved all the DATA in the harddrive.
Now I am trying to repair the boot partition with test disk…. any suggestions or help????
Best of luck to all .
Al.
April 4th, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Alberto,
You said all personal data is save. Why do you want to repair the partition? Can you reinstall the operating system from the recovery disc and start over?
June 26th, 2009 at 7:19 pm
My husband just bought an EAGLE CONSUS portable 2.5 mesh external storage system, we hooked it up with the usb cords and it pops up with an option to safely remove the hardware; and shows that the system is running properly but it never pops up in my computer under the hard drives or removable hardware;
We can feel the hard drive loading and the fan spinning what if any could be the reason the drive isn’t registering 100%
thanks in advance
June 27th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Cherie,
Here’s my guess. Most likely the hard drive is working fine, but it’s not partitioned and formatted.
Before you can use the hard drive, you’ll have to create a partition and format it.
Go to Disc Management utility. Right click on My Computer – Manage – Disc Management. Can you see the hard drive in there?
Right click on the hard drive, create a partition (primary partition) and format it with NTFS (you can use quick format).
After it’s formatted, the hard drive should appear in My Computer and you can use it.
July 17th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
You are a lifesaver!
My Acer just wouldn’t boot up and even though I have the proper Recovery disk and all, I suspect that would erase all my data.
So I decided to yank the drive out, back up my C: drive and then reset the computer to default by using the recovery disc.
Am I right in assuming I can just plug in my UATA Seagate 120 GB in an external enclosure and read/copy files off it? Are these discs any different to my normal backup disc because they have Windows XP and all that jazz in there as well?
Anyway, a well written and illustrated guide. Well done!
Anupriya
July 28th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Hi,
My Sony laptop didn’t boot and I proceeded the “Restore C: Drive”, meaning everything I had (software and files)was erased (I have a back up of only part of the files). Is it still possible to recover my files using an external USB enclosure?
July 29th, 2009 at 6:10 am
I have an HP laptop that has stopped working. The screen is blank but the LED lights are on. 2 times after the laptop has been plugged in for weeks it came on for a half day or so then off again. also when it was working it would not work at all without the power cord. So I was thinking the battery or power is the problem…suggestions please
August 31st, 2009 at 5:32 pm
Okay, I don’t know a whole bunch of technical terms or anything, but I hope you can help me.
I have an IBM thinkpad 600. The computer works, but does not have the OS I want on it. It currently has installed on it Ubuntu 5.10 and I would like to put Win 98 on it. I have tried burning boot disks, but cannot seem to find one that works.
A few days ago, I got the idea of plugging in my HD to my PC and putting the needed files on it from there. I borrowed a converter (laptop AND desktop Hard Drives to USB) from a friend, and tried to use it. My PC recognizes it right away, and installed the drivers needed, but I cannot find it anywhere. I have checked My Computer, but still don’t know where it is.
Can u help?
September 1st, 2009 at 7:49 am
Pat,
I think this article from Microsoft will help you. The article explains how to install Windows 98 on a computer without OS.
September 18th, 2009 at 11:17 am
Hi there. dont know if anyone can help. I bought an external enclosure and used it with the harddrive from my laptop where the screen was broken. I then connected it to my new laptop and it works. But I cant find my pictures or music in the harddrive, just the programs, but they cant open. Are there any ideas on how i can get access to my pictures on the external harddrive?
Thanks for a good site.
September 20th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
Anna,
What was the operating system installed on the hard drive? XP or Vista?
Path for XP:
Documents and Settings >> User (your profile name) >> My Documents >> My Pictures
Path for Vista:
Users >> User name (your profile name) >> Pictures
These are default paths for XP and Vista.
November 2nd, 2009 at 6:37 pm
You only need enclosures for notebook ATA HDDs. The notebook ATA does not match pin configuration with PC ATA. SATA HDD can be swapped with no other addition. Those are both ways compatible no matter what.