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.
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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 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 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 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.
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.
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
August 11th, 2008 at 12:29 am
10x for the great article!
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.
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 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.