Swapping Hard Drives

I'm not sure if this is really the right forum for this but I figure it will probably contain the people most knowledgable about it.

I've bought a new laptop because various things were going wrong with my old one, including the power adapter breaking. Now I want to get all the stuff off my old laptop but it doesn't have enough battery left to give me time to transfer it to an external HDD and because the adapter is bust I can't charge it.

Would it be viable to use one of my families laptops, take the HDD out of their laptop and my old one, put my old HDD into their laptop then open up the contents and copy them to an external HDD then put everything back how it was. Once this is all done would their laptop be exactly same as it was before, and would it be fine reading all the content off my HDD?

Hope that all made sense

Thanks

 

That should work but Windows might have a hard time loading up. Boot up in Safe Mode.

 

Yes, that will work, but as Jeffito123 said, Windows may complain about something (drivers or the license). If it doesn't boot, the best solution is to use a Live Ubuntu Flash drive to copy the data from your HDD to the external HDD.

Once you put the original HDD back, the laptop should run as usual...

 

Personally I'd stick the drive in a dock of some sort and copy it that way.

 

Thanks for the help guys. I was hoping to avoid spending any money on it (part of the reason I just got a new laptop instead of trying to save the old one was because I didn't consider it worth spending money on to save). I guess I was sorta of looking at getting the Sonnet 15 thunderbolt dock with the HDD space anyways, would that work ok?

 

No, the Sonnet is not what I would recommend for this 'job'.

See ($13):
Vantec NexStar TX 2.5in SATA to USB 2.0 Hard Drive Enclosure at Memory Express


Or, if USB 2.0 is too slow - just get a USB 3.0 model.

You can also use a friends desktop too...

Or ask your local computer shop to transfer the data for $10...


How much data are we talking about? 10GB, 100GB or 1TB?

 

It was more that I was thinking of getting the sonnet anyway for all my peripherals and was wondering if I could you the drive bay for this purpose before putting in a 500GB drive for backup.

I think I've got about 250GB that need transferring.

 

If you're getting the Sonnet anyways - sure, you can use it to transfer the notebook drives contents (it does do 2.5" drives, right).

Even with 250GB to transfer, USB 2.0 would be tolerable for a one time transfer - but USB 3.0 will definitely cut that time in half or even a quarter depending on what type of files you're transferring. (Also; if you do get an external enclosure and plan on keeping it; it will be much more useful in the long run if it's USB 3.0, rather than the slower USB 2.0).