How to recover data from an old Hard drive?

Guys, I need your help here.

I have three hard drives removed from old computer towers some time ago, each with various issues.

One had the blue screen of death.

I understand that there is a way to connect them to my current PC tower to possibly retrieve the old data and images.

Can someone tell me, in simpleton terms, on how I would be able to do this please?

Many thanks.

PM Sent

Try a forum search. :slap

A ubuntu LIVE CD and run G-parted.

I have done this a couple of times and I have hardly any experience with computers.

It was sometime ago but from memory, I removed a side of the tower, where inside there is a ribbon going to your HD, on this there should be another connector to plug your old HD into, there should also be a power lead, just mirror it the same as the HD thats installed and all going well it should now show up on your PC. Now you can copy your files over.

I have done this a couple of times and I have hardly any experience with computers.It was sometime ago but from memory, I removed a side of the tower, where inside there is a ribbon going to your HD, on this there should be another connector to plug your old HD into, there should also be a power lead, just mirror it the same as the HD thats installed and all going well it should now show up on your PC. Now you can copy your files over.

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Hi Mate,

Thanks for your reply. I have been doing some research, as that is the way that I seem to recall. But, it says that is not foolproof and damage can be caused to the PC settings etc.

Apache PMd me just now while I was doing some research into it (I know, I should have done this before posting). and this is an extract of my reply:

I have just taken photos of my hard drives, and thought I'd do some research into them when I came across this:

http://tips4pc.com/articles/computer..._computer_.htm

That was saying about SATA and IDE Hard drives. I have 2 IDE and 1 SATA - bloody typical. but there again, I don't mind as long as they work. I don't know though, as I am sure that I have been a little rough with them in the past, and seem to recall dropping one of them. :_|

I have been looking on eBay at these, so far:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nk....c0.m270.l1313

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-5-IDE-HD...item4cfc2d9d96

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-5-3-5-SA...item6fc96c1252

If the old drive was the main boot drive from the old knackerd PC

you will typically have to set a jumper strap on the drive to tell it its a secondary drive & not a primary boot drive..

otherwise the PC will get confused with two connected drives BOTH primary boot drives!

I could send you an adapter to plug it into a USB port, all you need is power, which you should have a spare connector inside your PC.

Only a suggestion,I have heard before

that a data transfer cable makes this

task easier.

Best of luck Admin.

If the disks still work I have always done it the wat Sellers says, along with the point made by SL,

Find the jumper and set it to slave

plug it inot to your existing tower, to be honest I just plug it in with the side of, dont even bother to fix it in a by just balance on something or leave it on the floor.

Reboot tower, you should now have an extra drive, copy stuff, shut down, remove disk, reboot, all good.

And i do this several times a year to salvage data or build new machines.

Not once has it destroyed my pc settings.

They important point is to find the jumper and set it to slave, or as SL says it may try to boot from the wrong disk.

Just to make it clear make sure the twer is powered off when you put the disk in

Note...if hdd were boot disks loaded with windows....odds are putting them in another windows pc as non- booting will mean windows will not let you access data on them...users/ passwords etc.

However using a linux live cd to boot from will bypass the problem and let you work with data on disks.

STOP! If you connect old suspect hard discs to your nice new pc it might be that they have viruses etc. First thing before you start transferring old data is to run a virus check!

Now, how you do this depends on what the old hard discs are i.e. SATA or IDE. What size they are 3.5" (towers) or 2.5" (laptops). And then what you have in the way of a working computer now. IF the discs are older AND from a tower as opposed to a laptop then likely to be 3.5" IDE format, which look like this, generally a "big" white, 4-pin power connector and a "long" data plug often on a ribbon cable, sometimes a round cable:



Let's stop here for a second, if it, the disc(s) looks like the photo above then I have a 3.5" caddy that you simply put the IDE drive in. Connect the supplied mains psu to it and via a USB lead plug it into any pc of your choice. Dead simple and you won't have to open your existing pc. Downside it's a tad slow in terms of data transfer - more on that in a mo but TBH more than adequate for transferring a few files. Anyway, if you want I could post this to you to borrow no problems. Or dive down to Maplin and get one yourself:

USB 2.0 3.5 Inch Hard Drive Housing : 3.5 inch HDD Enclosures : Maplin Electronics

or

3.5 Inch IDE / SATA USB 2.0 Combo Enclosure : 2.5 inch HDD Enclosures : Maplin Electronics

It may be that your existing pc tower (assuming that's the case) has a motherboard that supports both SATA and IDE drives. You could fit the old drive in permanent / semi-permanent. This will mean opening the case, screwing the drive in and connecting an IDE cable and power supply to it. Of course it might be that you don't have IDE channels or if you do the leads aren't in there! Plus side is it'll be quicker on the data transfer than via the USB route. Again speed for what you want is not really an issue.

Then again even if your new pc only supports SATA then there are lots of gizmos that let you put an IDE drive inside a SATA only pc, like this:

SATA To IDE Convertor : Internal SATA Cables : Maplin Electronics

Of course you will probably need to do this for each disc so I reckon the caddy is the way to go!

Many ways to skin this cat!

BTW, SATA drives are generally physically the same size as IDE (3.5" or 2.5") but the connections on the back are different. Plus side you don't have to mess around with changing jumpers:



The above photos show 3.5" drives.

If you get stuck, shout. The nerds at Maplin would always point you in the right direction. Offer still stands on the caddy loan. Only using Maplin as an example plus they're generally local. (I use Ebuyer for most of my stuff BTW - cheap as but online).

Cheers

Admin,

I have a SATA/IDE external disk reader, plug it into a USB, drop the disk in and Bob is your Mothers Brother.

You can borrow it if you want don't buy one FFS!

If you get issues with Windoze, I'll lend you a laptop with Ubuntu on it.

I'll need a few days to wipe Windoze & put it on though.

Admin,I have a SATA/IDE external disk reader, plug it into a USB, drop the disk in and Bob is your Mothers Brother.

You can borrow it if you want don't buy one FFS!

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I PM'd Admin to offer him the loan of mine! You are closer.

I just throw them in the bin, if I have survived for three months or more without the information then I obviously did not need it, so I pretend to be a man and bin it.

Thanks for the offers guys, but ordered them Yesterday.

:_|

I just throw them in the bin, if I have survived for three months or more without the information then I obviously did not need it, so I pretend to be a man and bin it.

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I'd not suggest throwing hard drives in bin without physically destroying them as data recovery (theft) from old HDD is quite easy.

Dropping them repeatedly on to concrete from a good height until they rattle works well, a 14lb sledge hammer can be fun and data recovery unfriendly, stripping them down to the platters can be interesting and effective especially if you scatter the parts at the local dumps electronics skip.

I have recovered some images from two of the three HDDs, but there wasn't as many as I had thought on there.

The third one (20GB) is totally dead. I don't have a spare circuit board for it, so I cannot change that first.

I am toying with the idea of trying the Platter in the one that worked. (different circuit board designs).

What do you think Guys? I haven't got a torque screwdriver though. Been looking on youtube at the video of the Clicking HDD before and after it has not been torqued to the correct manufacturers setting.

I have recovered some images from two of the three HDDs, but there wasn't as many as I had thought on there.The third one (20GB) is totally dead. I don't have a spare circuit board for it, so I cannot change that first.

I am toying with the idea of trying the Platter in the one that worked. (different circuit board designs).

What do you think Guys? I haven't got a torque screwdriver though. Been looking on youtube at the video of the Clicking HDD before and after it has not been torqued to the correct manufacturers setting.

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Swapping the circuit board usually only works if the drive is up and spinning due to the defect map held on the board being unique to each drive, you also need to ensure you have the same board revision, crucially it's sector 0 that's key, if the actuator can't calibrate to this you are into a really time consuming recovery.

Although it's in the realms of possibility to disassemble a drive down to removing/changing platters you have to be careful about contamination, dust, finger prints, smoke particles, hair (pet, Human) are all larger than the distance that the read/write head flies above the surface of the platter, there are various Youtube demos on this recovery process. However a word of warning with a spindle rotating at a least 5400rpm if it detaches from the drive housing it would make Odd job's bowler look tame (Goldfinger 007 baddie)

have you tried the fridge?

and if you do ever get it spinning DONT let it stop, that may be your one and only shot at it, so once it starts keep taking stuff off, even meaningless stuff until you have it empty,.

Another extreme salvage method is to remove circuit board and LOW temp bake it in oven....I kid you not. With laptops etc dry solder joints (which occur with age/usage) can be reflowed in oven. Take care to control temp to solder melt point and not above...risky but can work. How desperate are you....