data recovery from an old non working puter

[texancobra]

I have an older hp pavillion desktop I bought back in '99 that apparently was zapped in a storm. I had many videos of my kids growing up and data that I would love to recover somehow. After the electrical storm, it just made a humming sound when plugged in, never would start up, and I was told by a geeks squad man that the data can still be recovered by taking out the hard drive and downloading the info. I have 2 newer puters that can be used but I have somehow lost the electrical power cord for the older puter. It is a 6360 HP pavillion, subclass 345 with an XP operating system, and around a 350mhz. Is it possible for me to do this myself using my other computer(s)? Thanks for your help!

 

[ryokimball]

Your biggest obstacle would be the physical connection; laptop drives don't plug into desktop computers all that easily. If you can identify the hard drive connection and find the appropriate adapter (such as a "hard drive case" with the right connections), then you could simply plug it up and download away --just like an external (or, depending on your methods, an extra internal) drive.
Alternatively (probably more expensively, too), you can find a cheap old computer that happens to fit the same drive and plug it up, hope the OS still works (or use a LiveCD OS like DSL) and use a network to transfer the data.

.,.sorry for the quick answer, though; I'm cooking steak....

 

[cavemangrinder]

Yeah. The easiest way to do that is just put the old hard drive into an external enclosure. You just need to know what connection it is. I am betting it is more than likely an IDE drive. Heres a link to a simple laptop enclosure for that: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817334008 For desktop: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817388001 All you have to do is plug it up and drag and drop the files you need, (providing that the drive still works). Anyway, that should do it for you.

 

[Goldeneye]

That happened to me and I bought a external case off ebay and then kept it to use as an external hard drive. Worked out nicely.

 

[wol-va-rine]

That happened to me and I bought a external case off ebay and then kept it to use as an external hard drive. Worked out nicely.

you can probably get it cheaper on ebay like Goldeneye said, but you can skip the hassle and buy one from Radio Shack or something, they're not that expensive, even at regular prices, this one's $20, but it depends on how quickly you want to retrieve the data I guess...

Mad Dog hard drive enclosure - woof woof

one of the reviews sounds exactly like what you want to do...

"This was so quick and easy to set up and to use. I pulled an IDE drive out of an old computer, put it into the Mad Dog case, and, 2 minutes later, I was browsing files on the old drive from my new PC."...