Recovering hard drive info

[Chnandler]

How can I retreive info from a hard drive that is in a computer that won't power up? If I put it in an external hard drive enclosure and plug it into my new computer, can I access it, even though it has its own windows program installed. Or will I need to change the bios in my new system to boot from the old drive? I'm sure this is something very basic, but I have not had to do it before. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Dan]

Did you try taking the HDD out of the old computer and connecting it to the new computer as a secondary storage device?

You should be able to copy all files to the new hard drive and take it out, or just use it as an additional HDD.

[Chewy]

I just pull the hard drive and take my cables off my dvd-rom/dvd burner? and connect to the old hard drive with side off the case, if my documents was made private(encrypted you can't access, you could set new computer to boot to that old drive if it had windows xp on it but that's a can of worms best left to professionals.

[Chnandler]

Did you try taking the HDD out of the old computer and connecting it to the new computer as a secondary storage device?

You should be able to copy all files to the new hard drive and take it out, or just use it as an additional HDD.

Actually, I haven't done anything yet. Didn't want to screw anything up. But that was essentially what I was wanting to try, only as an external drive. I guess my question is this: Does the fact that it has it's own version of windows installed on it cause any problems? Both hard drives would have XP and it would obviously boot from my primary drive, but would it conflict with the OS installed on the secondary (or external) drive when I try to search for files on it? I don't think it will....but was afraid to try w/o consulting the gurus!

[katzdvd]

but would it conflict with the OS installed on the secondary (or external) drive when I try to search for files on it?

As per chewy;

I just pull the hard drive and take my cables off my dvd-rom/dvd burner? and connect to the old hard drive with side off the case

Set that drive as the slave (jumper), connect it to the slave connector on the main cable & you will be fine. That drive will show up in "My Computer", & you will easily be able to retrieve the data off of it that you want. Be Careful not to delete anything important!!!



Good Luck, katz