Removing/Recovering Hard Drive from dead machine

[LouB]

I think my dad's emachine T2885 is dead. It's likely the power supply and/or motherboard.


So my question is. How do I go about recovering the data on the Hard Drive?

Thanks

 

[Rick]

Physically remove the hard drive, install it into an USB enclosure and plug it into another system with Windows 2000 or better... Then copy your data as desired.

While copying, you may encounter access denied error messages. Here's how to get past those:
https://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?t=8914&highlight=access+denied

 

[LouB]

Physically remove the hard drive, install it into an USB enclosure and plug it into another system with Windows 2000 or better... Then copy your data as desired.

While copying, you may encounter access denied error messages. Here's how to get past those:
https://www.techspot.com/vb/showthread.php?t=8914&highlight=access+denied

Thanks Rick.



Any recommendations on USB Enclosures? Where to buy and/or brand? Are the enclosures universal or do I need to know specifics about my hard drive which will determine what enclosure I buy? Does Ccity or Best Buy carry them? Or will I save $$ buying online?

 

[Rick]

Are the enclosures universal or do I need to know specifics about my hard drive which will determine what enclosure I buy?

You'll need to know if your drive is SATA or IDE. I can say with much certainty that you have an IDE drive.

Any recommendations on USB Enclosures? Where to buy and/or brand?

Where to buy:
www.newegg.com

What to buy:
Anything - no matter how cheesy or cheap - will work. Just make sure it is IDE and USB. If you get USB + Firewire, more power to you, but USB will be fine for most PC users.

You should be able to find some cheap ones for around $20 and that will be fine for this scenario. Since I do a lot of computer service work, I use them very frequently and the cheap ones tend to quit working eventually, but they should be satisfactory in this scenario. Don't be afraid to spend some extra cash for a good one though, if it is something you think you'd like to keep using. They certainly are handy.

Since I've bought so many, I can tell you this is a pretty good one for the money: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817171012

If you buy one at BestBuy or CompUSA or wherever, they charge considerably more for cheesy enclosures... Unless they are on sale. You're welcome to check it out though and see if you can find a decent one at a good price locally.

 

[MISHA8725]

I would suggest getting a medium priced USB hard drive enclosure. You can go to Addonics. I highly recommend any of their hardware. Once you get the data that you want off of the hard drive and put it on a new machine. The USB external enclosure with the hard drive can be used as extra disk space. It works out.

 

[LouB]

Thanks again Rick and Misha.

Good point about using the old Hard Drive for extra storage. I guess I don't need to trash all the components just because the Power Supply and/or motherboard died.

 

[LouB]

I have recovered the hard drive thanks to the above but now I cannot access the files that were under my Windows XP User ID - most likely because I had a log in password?


I can get to the rest of the drive without problem. But I cannot get the files I actually need.

I know the password but I'm not being prompted for it.

Any ideas?

Thanks

 

[Rick]

While copying, you may encounter access denied error messages. Here's how to get past those:
https://www.techspot.com/vb/showthrea...=access+denied

Did you try the above?

 

[LouB]

Did you try the above?

My sincere apologies. I forgot you had posted that info. I hate when people (me) don't read when you're trying to help.

I will try those and let you know.

Thanks again

 

[LouB]

Did you try the above?

finally got around to trying out your solution and it worked great.

thanks again... so glad i found this site!!!

 

[Minnielake]

New User with a question

I am excited about learning all I can on new and old products. I have had an emachine and the mother board burnt out, I then purchased external hard drive enclosure, took the hard drive out of the emachine and now when I plug it into my computer I can not seen to get anything to come up. What is my problem?
Thanks for your support
minnielake

 

[MISHA8725]

For starters, start your own thread. Then right click My Computer, select Computer Management. Wait for that window to open, on the left side panel click Disk Management. Sometimes when you connect an external usb mass storage device it will automatically assign a drive letter to it. Sometimes that drive letter might be occupied by something else already (CDROM, USB Thumb Drive, etc.) Make sure that the device you are plugging in has it's own drive letter. if not change it, then it should be accessible from My Computer window.