Recovering data from old harddrive

Krug

So my mom spilled a glass of wine on her old laptop, but I think I was able to save the hard drive, so now she has a new laptop and this old hard drive with all her music and pictures on it. What will be the best way to try and recover that data?

Is there just a cable I can use, or do I need something more involved?

Tofystedeth

Depending on the type of drive you may be able to just plug it into desktop PC. I think SATA laptop drives use the same connector as desktop. If it's an IDE drive, you'll either need to get an adapter or get an enclosure for it.

Krug

It is a SATA drive, yes, but I was hoping for a way to do a direct transfer from laptop drive to new laptop drive, as putting it on a desktop(aka my computer) woud still require some other way to transfer a hundred gigs of files.

corky842

Get an enclosure so she (or you) can use it for storage once you get everything you want off there.

TL DR

If this sort of thing rarely happens, a hard drive enclosure is the way to go. You'll be able to recover the data, and then have a neat external drive for miscellaneous storage.

If you want more versatility, a USB<->IDE/SATA adapter will run you about $20 and is awesome for these kinds of situations.

If you don't want to spend any money, just connect the hard drive to a desktop PC, connect the desktop and your mom's new laptop via ethernet to the router, and enable file sharing. Set it to transfer and leave it overnight.

Quantux

Unless the drive is really old and the new drive would be a huge upgrade, you could always just swap them. Windows may complain, but you may be able to get away with just updating some drivers.

PeregrineFalcon

Quantux wrote: »

Unless the drive is really old and the new drive would be a huge upgrade, you could always just swap them. Windows may complain, but you may be able to get away with just updating some drivers.

Salmoned for horrible idea. Not only will this give you an old drive soaked with wine in the new laptop, but you'll likely hose the Windows activation and cause no end of grief when it shits the bed trying to install a whole new set of drivers from scratch.

There is only one situation where this is not a totally awful idea, and that's if your mother got an identical laptop as a replacement. Even then it's a better idea to just get an external enclosure (for $20 or so) and use it as an external drive. Set up some backup software and use it to make copies of the music/photos/etc, and you've got that extra safeguard as well.

Tofystedeth

Even if the activation itself is fine, it could very well refuse to boot off that drive if the chipsets aren't identical.