Hard Drive recovery

[MJD6512]

Hey there!

new to the site, but had  some questions about an old laptop of mine that had died a few years ago. i kept it because i wanted to get everything off the hard drive but since starting to research how to do so, ive realized it may not work so i figured id ask.

so what originally happened was something fell on the computer a broke the screen. i hadnt touched it in a year or so before realizing i could use my tv as the screen. TA-DA LAPTOP WAS BACK....but only for a short time before the screen when blue and the laptop refused to turn on after that. does that mean the hard drive is toast? i really hope not, there was so many pictures and songs i wanted to transfer.

TIA
Devon

[DaveLembke]

Assuming the laptop is new enough that it is a SATA type Hard Drive, I would get an empty 2.5" external hard drive enclosure kit and carefully extract the drive from the laptop and install it into this enclosure. Once the hard drive is in this enclosure and power and communication plugs ( usually a single connection to a small PCB ) you can connect to the hard drive from a healthy computer by use of a USB cable that should come with the external hard drive enclosure. If the hard drive is healthy you should then have access to all data on it. However the hard drive could be partially damaged causing the OS to fail to boot on it but your personal data could be just fine on it to copy to a healthy hard drive or to a cloud storage online such as Google Drive which gives 15GB storage for free to people with a gmail account.

If the laptop is much older you will see gold pins at the back of the drive and then you would need to get an external 2.5" enclosure for a Mobile Drive IDE connection. So if you remove the drive and no 2 rows of gold pins means you will need a SATA type enclosure so its best to extract the drive before you buy the enclosure to make sure your getting the correct one or look up the make/model laptop and look at specs for hard drive that is installed which it should say SATA or IDE to indicate which enclosure you will need.

[MJD6512]

thank you so much! i was able to extract the drive from the laptop, now just waiting for the adapter kit to come in so i can check the files with my working laptop. much appreciated!