Old Hard Drive Data Cable

This avoids repeating transfers.

Old hard drive data cable.

Ahhh the hassle of old hard drives. This is a simple tutorial on retrieving data from a broken laptop. Retrieving files from an old hard drive is easy with a sata dock upgrading to a solid state drive is one of the cheapest and easiest upgrades you can do to speed up your computer. Thus it can be used to easily get files off an old hard drive that won t boot.

This is called external sata or esata the way it works is that the external drive attaches to the esata connection at the back of the computer next to the other openings for things like the monitor network cable and usb ports. Double click on the icon representing the old hard drive and navigate to the folders containing your files and photos. You can use a usb drive or external hard drive or optical drive to transfer files and settings from your old computer onto your new computer. Existing and lost or deleted files will be recovered.

If you don t want to use an intermediate external hard drive or nas to copy the data back and forth you can just connect the new and old drives together using either a simple usb to sata ide adapter or cable a laptop hard drive enclosure which holds the old hard drive and connects it to your laptop via usb or a laptop hard drive upgrade kit. Make sure that there is enough space on the drive to complete the transfer. Open file explorer on your new laptop and you should be able to see your old hard drive connected as an external hard drive. I used a usb adapter that converts your computer s hard drive in to an external hard drive.

Additionally the data recovery software minitool power data recovery is designed to retrieve data from an external hard drive usb drive sd card ssd hdd etc. External hard drives can also be used with sata connections given of course that the hard drive itself has a sata connection too. Using an external hard drive to transfer your data from an old pc to a new pc also gives you a backup of your data in case things go wrong. Plug the sata end of the hard drive into the usb adapter and plug the usb end into the usb port of your new laptop.

There s hardly a geek around or even casual computer owner for that matter that doesn t have a few old drives squirreled away.