/ Recover Data from crashed hard drive

Recover Data from crashed hard drive

Is there an easy way to get my pictures and other info off of a computer that the motherboard had a meltdown? I have a new computer and still have the old hard drive. I was thinking that there may be some way to take the hard drive out of the old computer and connect it to my new computer, perhaps through a USB port. Help?

Kat Delong You were completely on the right track. In fact there are two good ways to get your information off the old hard drive. One is to get an external hard drive enclosure that you can put your hard drive in and transfer the information to another computer. The other way is to put your old hard drive in the new computer and use it as a “slave.”

Hard Drive Enclosure

The easiest thing to do is to purchase an inexpensive hard drive enclosure. You can find them all over computer stores and the web - two places to try are New Egg and Tiger Direct. Don’t be frightened by the 4-bay enclosures that cost a few hundred dollars. All you need is an enclosure with one bay and that should run you considerably less than $50. All you need to do is take the old hard drive out, put it in the enclosure and hook the enclosure up to your new PC using the USB port. The new computer will assign the enclosure a new drive number, and you should be able to access the information and transfer it to the new system with no problem.

Set Up as a Slave

You can also put your old hard drive into a free bay in your new machine and set it up as a slave so that you can recover the data. Follow these directions to set it up as a slave:

Unplug the old PC and take the case off. Locate and remove the hard drive by removing the screws and take the small power cable on the side (it will have red, black and yellow wires). Pull the hard drive out.
Now you need to set the jumper. Find a set of pins that are located on the back of the hard drive - they are usually between the power and hard drive cable connections.
You should see one labeled Slave. For most hard drives, you should put the jumper here to save it as a slave.
Now get into the new computer and find an empty bay for this hard drive. You will see a big, wide cable. You want to connect the very end of the slave drive and use the second connection to the end for the drive that is already there.
Connect a power connection to the hard drive and put the case back together.

For my money, as long as all you want to do is access the data, a hard drive enclosure is the way to go. It is inexpensive and easy to do and you should be able to access everything off of it as long as it hasn’t been damaged.