BleepingComputer.com: Help recovering hard drive from crashed computer

Hi all,

Old PC of mine crashed. I had not backed up hard drive (gasp!).
Diagnostics by a repairman stated that motherboard had gone dead.

I've removed the HD (WD800). I am wondering how to go about recovering the data. Repairman wants to charge a lump amount to do this. Can I connect it to the motherboard of my other, second working CPU? If I do that, will it recognize this as a separate HD or will it try to run from the WD800 as the primary HD?

Any help is much appreciated.
Thanks!

The easy way,

Unplug the working unit & open it
If the CD drive has the same [IDE] connectors temporarily unhook the CD drive & hook the cables to the old hard drive.

Start the unit

Open My Computer
The drive should be listed
Double click it to open it
Double click Documents & Settings
Double click the folder with your user name
Double click Mt Documents

Right click on what you want to save & on the menu click Send to>My Documents
What you do that to will be transfered to My Documents on the good unit
You can not save installed programs [like office ] , only personal folders/files/pictures/etc.

When you are done turn it off
unplug it
remove the HD & hook t5he CD drive up.

If your second PC uses a HD with the same connection type, you should be able to remove the HD from your second PC and replace it with the HD from your now deceased PC. Then burn whatever you need to CDs or copy to a flash drive/external HD. If a motherboard failure was responsible for the death of your computer, all your data should be intact.


EDIT: Haha Joe you beat me to it

This post has been edited by Blade Zephon: 16 June 2009 - 11:46 PM

Thanks blade and Joe. At first glance, it seems the "broken" HD has a Serial ATA while my working CD has IDE. Will take it apart and update you guys.

It will also need to be set to "slave"

OldPhil, on Jun 17 2009, 02:40 AM, said:

OldPhil- Thanks. Do I do that when I boot up?

If it is a SATA drive there is no jumper for setting the drive to master , slave, or cablr select.

If it is a IDE drive & you hook it up in place of the CD drive you won't have to fool with a jumper

If it is SATA simply install it.

If you try to replace the HD in the new unit with the one from the "broken" unit it probably won't start as there will be a heck of a driver conflict.

You guys are great, thanks!

Stupid question: the SATA and IDE connections are obviously different; what am I missing here? How do I connect this SATA drive? I do have it's SATA cable. But, the CD seems to be IDE connected?! Am I even making sense?

If the "old" hard drive is SATA & the CD drive is IDE you can't connect the HD in place of the CD drive.

If the old HD is SATA simply plug the SATA cable in the drive & a open SATA connector on the motherboard & hook a power lead to it.

Alright. Well, almost there, but still a glitch:

I'm realizing that my "new" computer may not be so "new" after all--it has NO SATA connectors at all. All my drives are connected via IDEs or USB (external). I'm guessing I need to somehow get a converter cable that goes from SATA -> IDE or from SATA -> USB?

Is this correct? Any ideas?

Some IDE cables have a second plug mid way, being all IDE you should be Ok. SATA plugs sre very small by comparison.

If the "old" drive is SATA & the "new" computer only has IDE connections you are going to need either a external USB SATA drive enclosure or a adapter to go from IDE to SATA .