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Backing Up A Broken Laptop's HardDrive

TubularLuggageTubularLuggage Registered User regular
edited June 2009 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
Today I found out that my laptop has decided that it doesn't want to work anymore. Starting it up results in a few loud beeps and a blank screen. There's still the sound of the hard drive working, and fan noise.
It's been diagnosed as a problem with the video card and/or motherboard. This information may not be important, but I figure I may as well include it.

Is there any way for me to back up the hard drive before sending it in for repairs? Worst case, I can take it in to Futureshop and have it done for about $80, but if it's possible to get it done for free, obviously that would be preferable.

Is there anything I can do?

TubularLuggage on

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    wunderbarwunderbar What Have I Done? Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    step 1: buy This (or something equivalent)
    step 2: pull hard drive out of laptop
    step 3: hook hard drive up to device purchased in step 1, and another computer
    step 4: copy and paste
    step 5: wait
    step 6: profit

    wunderbar on
    XBL: thewunderbar PSN: thewunderbar NNID: thewunderbar Steam: wunderbar87 Twitter: wunderbar
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    PeregrineFalconPeregrineFalcon Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    wunderbar wrote: »
    step 1: buy This (or something equivalent)
    step 2: pull hard drive out of laptop
    step 3: hook hard drive up to device purchased in step 1, and another computer
    step 4: copy and paste
    step 5: wait
    step 6: profit

    All of this in lime.

    Bear in mind that you may have to do ye olde "Take recursive ownership of fucking everything" trick in order to pull stuff from the Documents and Settings folder. If you get weird permission errors, do that and retry.

    Edit: If it's a SATA hard drive in the notebook and you have a PC with an empty SATA connector, you don't even need the enclosure in Step 1. Just pull the drive out, plug in the desktop SATA connectors, copy.

    PeregrineFalcon on
    Looking for a DX:HR OnLive code for my kid brother.
    Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
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    TubularLuggageTubularLuggage Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Thanks for the advice. I'll definitely look into that.

    TubularLuggage on
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    RuddurBallRuddurBall Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    Just one word to the wise, if your laptop just suddenly decided to not work, it might be your hard drive thats fried in the first place, in that case you need to find someone on shit creek to sell you a paddle.

    RuddurBall on
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    PeregrineFalconPeregrineFalcon Registered User regular
    edited June 2009
    RuddurBall wrote: »
    Just one word to the wise, if your laptop just suddenly decided to not work, it might be your hard drive thats fried in the first place, in that case you need to find someone on shit creek to sell you a paddle.

    Generally if it's the hard drive, it will be a "failure to boot" type of post rather than "Total Epic Failure" with beep codes and whatnot.

    I assume the unit itself is covered under warranty though, so that at least once you get the data off you can send it in?

    PeregrineFalcon on
    Looking for a DX:HR OnLive code for my kid brother.
    Can trade TF2 items or whatever else you're interested in. PM me.
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