Dead laptop, getting info off hard drive?

Not sure if this is in the right forum but anyways..

My friends laptop has died havent been informed of why but she needs information off her harddrive for a deadline next week, she has been to a big chain and they have said it will cost £100 which is pretty ridiculous in my eyes, anyway is there anyway i can get the information off her harddrive to mine?

I was thinking i could install her hard drive as a 2nd hard drive on my machine but i only currently have my laptop with me and it only has 1 hdd slot.

Any help apprectiated thanks.

 

Depending upon whether her (working?) HDD is a SATA HDD or IDE HDD, you can buy the appropriate USB enclosure, connect it to your laptop, and copy the data off her HDD.

 

yep. you might also be able to add it as a secondary HDD to a desktop machine.

 

Thanks for the quick replies, i didnt even know they made hard drive to usb! im out of touch with new technology it seems. I think thats the best solution il have a look around. Thanks again!

 

Just an extra note. Only works if the hard drive isn't damaged. If it't damaged there's no other way than to get some specialist to retrieve the data. Eitherway, just be sure to get the correct enclosure based on the HDD.

 

To tell you the truth..

If you ONLY need this cable to get some data and not use it indefinately as a usable drive, you might as well just opt for a SATA/USB cable or IDE/USB cable..

It is the same as an enclosure except with the actual enclosure.

Just a bit more convenient. AND there a bit cheaper!

 

I agree on it being a ripoff though a friend of mine works in a tech shop and he'd do it for free. They're there to make money anyways.

 

Also, if you do have an external drive or something like that, if it works, and if it is the same interface as the drive in your laptop (IDE or SATA) you can install the drive as bootable in your laptop and likely get the data off of it thatway. You will likely get activation warnings from Windows, and the display will likely be operating with the base VGA (800x600) driver, but it should work and not cost anything.

Greg

 

You could put her HDD in your lappy and boot a LIVE linux distro and save the data to a USB drive that way too. Then you dont have to buy anything. www.distrowatch.com or www.kanotix.com or many others. Good luck and keep us posted.

 

Hey guys just to update, we went and bought an enclosure for the hard drive ( http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/st...m=null&tm=null&sku=854879&category_oid=-31459)

and managed to get all the files off she needed, just put the hard drive in and the files appeared like it was a memory stick when plugged into my laptop. Didnt notice that last message godspeed so didnt get to attempt those methods but thanks anyway! really appretiate the replys guys!