How to rip a hard drive from a dead VAIO?

A couple months back my VAIO CR-240E died (mostly likely caused by motherboard failure). When I brought it into my local repair shop to get it diagnosed, I also had them rip the hard drive onto an external drive. However, when I checked the drive sometime later, I noticed that only about a third of my files were there.

So, I'm wondering if there is a way I can rip the hard drive myself at home. I'd rather not have to deal with that repair shop again (plus, I never seem to find the time to get down there). I have somewhere between 125-180 GB of data on the hard drive that I want, if that makes any difference.

 

I would get an external enclosure and go that route. Then you can get into the files I would be willing to guess. Newegg should have plenty of USB 2.5" external enclosures.

 

i would do that.. easiest way.

Panther214

 

If you put the original drive into an enclosure, to get access to your data you may need to take 'ownership' of the documents and settings folders (and/or the users setup under that folder).

The easiest way is to do that on a Windows 7 system:

In Windows 7:

If you double click on a folder and it refuses to open for you (or, it says it is an empty folder (and you know its not) then do this:

Right click on the folder, select Properties, select the Security tab, select the Advanced button, select the Owner tab and click Edit, select your Current user name (which you logged on with on this system) and make sure you click click Replace owner on subcontainers and objects.

Finally, click apply and okay and after a few moments (depending on how many subfolders and files inside the folder we're changing ownership on) you will be able to see all your files from the original VAIO CR-240E.

Hope this helps...

Good luck.

 

To the above;

If you have Windows XP all your user data is saved in Documents and Settings unless you defaulted somewhere else unwise like the root. In Vista/7 it is the Users folder.

You need an OS (XP Pro, Vista/7) that will be able to strip permissions and change the owner.

Right click on the folder, go to Properties. Go over to Security tab, then Advanced towards the bottom. You must change the Owner first with an administrator account. Click edit, select the administrator(s) and check replace owner on subcontainers and objects. It will change the owner on everything in that folder. YOU MUST HIT OK until or it will not save any changes.

Go back to security, hit Change Permissions, go to edit on the Everyone user and check full control and hit okay. This will strip permissions on every single file in the folder. Hit OK on every Window to save changes.

After all this is done then you can access the data. If you do not follow the steps and try to drag/drop it will copy then say at the end it did not have permission OR it will say it copied data and you won't be able to access data OR it will show no data copied.

 

Tsunade Hime,

In XP, you'll have to go to extra steps to get the 'security' tab.

Also, you don't need to change permissions twice - once to the account owner the host system is currently booted into will allow you to get access to the files/folder included in the folder you're modifying permissions for.

Once copied to a USB key or other external device - that folder and it's contents will have no 'owner' - it will be accessible by any and all systems after that.

 

Depends. Sometimes simple file sharing is turned on for XP. I've had data backups fail because owner wasn't changed, even though permissions were stripped.