Access unbootable laptop's HD from my laptop

Just curious if there is a way to access the HD on my wife's computer (which cannot boot, corrupt Vista boot, with my laptop) via USB or Ethernet.

I have an enclosure, but I lent it out =(

Thanks

 

You could get something like this or this.

 

True true, I was just curious if there was a secret DIY way of accomplishing the task. Like I mentioned, I've got an external enclosure, but I can't get it tonight.

Thanks for your help.

 

There is no DIY for this one. SATA to USB or Ethernet requires some hardware.

 

That's what I figured, thanks guys.

 

If you can boot the laptop with a CD (such as the Ubuntu CD which includes a live running linux system), then you can get the files off by putting them on a USB drive or sending them somewhere over the network.

 

Swarmer hit it on the nose, I use Knoppix CD for my file recovery operations and its works awesome. If you haven't tried it, definitely give it a whirl. You will find the transfer will even be quicker than from within the Windows os.

 

Excellent...I'll try that this afternoon.

Thanks! =)

 

Swarmer hit on the basic concept. You can use a linux variant liveCD, or you can download an iso of the UltimateBootCD, burn it to CD on your laptop, and then boot from that CD. That should give you the same access to the onboard hard drive as just another passive data store.

Actually, I just looked at the UBCD webpage, and it looks like you can set it up to boot from a USB stick as well, so that might be an easier alternative than burning a bootable CD/DVD.

And, of course, there is also a Windows-based version, called the UltimateBootCD4Windows.

 

I had this problem and used a enclosure, I retrieved the data I wanted and then formatted the drive and I now use it as a back-up device (",)

OB

 

Use a live CD, such as Ubuntu or Kubuntu, to get off your data.

 

Yeah, I got it working, thanks for the suggestions...clean out of reps.

Ciao