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Salvaging Info on a Dead Computer
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Jul 18, 2014 10:15:18   #
Leon S Loc: Minnesota
 
A few years back, our home was struck by lightening and we lost our computers and a lot of other items. What wasn't backed up and stored unplugged from the wall was lost. We paid a service $95 dollars to retrieve info on one machine. A few days ago my lap top mother board fried. Instead of paying another $95 dollars to try to retrieve what wasn't already backed up, I bought a Sata docking station for $35. It was easy to remove the lap top hard drive and recover the unsaved info onto my desk top. Now for $35 I have my info and a cheep portable hard drive for future use. These docking stations are available for almost all hard drives. If your not a computer geek, you may not have known about this alternative.

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Jul 18, 2014 10:20:39   #
Big Bill Loc: Phoenix, AZ
 
That's a quick and relatively way to retrieve data from an otherwise unresponsive drive.
Been doing this for a long time for friends.
Good post!

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Jul 18, 2014 10:21:59   #
Mr PC Loc: Austin, TX
 
Good job. I'm a computer pro and most people would rather pay someone that knows where all the data tends to hide out than attempt this themselves. Glad it worked out for you. $95 is pretty reasonable. If the file system was fried on the drive, there are data recovery companies that charge to diagnose whether anything can be salvaged, then you may be out $1000 or more depending on whether they need to do something about it in a clean room with very expensive equipment or not. The range is pretty broad between your $35 solution and the sky being the limit. You got lucky.

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Jul 18, 2014 10:49:33   #
Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.
 
Leon S wrote:
A few years back, our home was struck by lightening and we lost our computers and a lot of other items. What wasn't backed up and stored unplugged from the wall was lost. We paid a service $95 dollars to retrieve info on one machine. A few days ago my lap top mother board fried. Instead of paying another $95 dollars to try to retrieve what wasn't already backed up, I bought a Sata docking station for $35. It was easy to remove the lap top hard drive and recover the unsaved info onto my desk top. Now for $35 I have my info and a cheep portable hard drive for future use. These docking stations are available for almost all hard drives. If your not a computer geek, you may not have known about this alternative.
A few years back, our home was struck by lightenin... (show quote)



Let me understand this. You bought a docking station for $35. (Can you take a picture of it?) Removed the drive. Attached it to the DS, and were able to recover data? I have a device with which I can attach a HD to and see info on it. Just wondering if this is the same type of device.

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Jul 18, 2014 14:03:19   #
Big Bill Loc: Phoenix, AZ
 
Indi wrote:
Let me understand this. You bought a docking station for $35. (Can you take a picture of it?) Removed the drive. Attached it to the DS, and were able to recover data? I have a device with which I can attach a HD to and see info on it. Just wondering if this is the same type of device.


http://www.frys.com/product/6557533?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

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Jul 18, 2014 14:07:16   #
onyxtiger Loc: Northern California
 
Big Bill wrote:
http://www.frys.com/product/6557533?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG


A data converteor adapter for $14.97???? I'm now officially lost. :oops:

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Jul 18, 2014 14:18:13   #
Big Bill Loc: Phoenix, AZ
 
onyxtiger wrote:
A data converteor adapter for $14.97???? I'm now officially lost. :oops:


It's not a "data converter," it's a cable converter.
Specifically, a device that lets you connect a bare drive to your computer through a USB port.
It allows your computer to access the drive as though it were a standard data drive, not a bootable drive, quickly and easily.
Fry's has no lock on these devices:

http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Converter-Supply-Activity-EC-AHDD/dp/B00CPGYNV4/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1405707452&sr=8-3&keywords=usb+to+ata+converter

They're all over.

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Jul 18, 2014 14:39:29   #
onyxtiger Loc: Northern California
 
Big Bill wrote:
It's not a "data converter," it's a cable converter.
Specifically, a device that lets you connect a bare drive to your computer through a USB port.
It allows your computer to access the drive as though it were a standard data drive, not a bootable drive, quickly and easily.
Fry's has no lock on these devices:

http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Converter-Supply-Activity-EC-AHDD/dp/B00CPGYNV4/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1405707452&sr=8-3&keywords=usb+to+ata+converter

They're all over.
It's not a "data converter," it's a cabl... (show quote)


Thank you for the clarification. As you can tell, I'm NOT a computer person.
Now, let me get this straight. You then hook up an external hard drive to the other end of the cable?

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Jul 18, 2014 14:39:56   #
Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.
 
OK, the device I have does the same thing, except I can connect any kind of drive.
So how do you get data from a dead drive?

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Jul 18, 2014 17:41:19   #
sarge69 Loc: Ft Myers, FL
 
A computer can die easily. Hard Drives are a bit harder.

Having a device that plugs into your USB port and also has an IDE ( hard drive connector) end and also a SATA (laptop drive connector) lets you plug into any drive (out of the laptop or computer) and access the data. Even on a boot C Drive and then copy the info onto your drive or an external drive.

I value mine so much I bought a backup for it so I'll always have that option to move files around no matter what.

Sarge69

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Jul 18, 2014 21:17:43   #
Leon S Loc: Minnesota
 
Indi wrote:
Let me understand this. You bought a docking station for $35. (Can you take a picture of it?) Removed the drive. Attached it to the DS, and were able to recover data? I have a device with which I can attach a HD to and see info on it. Just wondering if this is the same type of device.


What I bought from Best Buy is a BLAC X docking station. Read the instructions and played with the retrieval. I'm many things, but a computer geek, I'm not. Therefor most people could do the job. I will confess, my wife helped a lot in transferring the info.

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Jul 18, 2014 21:21:42   #
Leon S Loc: Minnesota
 
Big Bill wrote:
http://www.frys.com/product/6557533?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG


I'm not that good with computers, but I think you would have to have a working computer that will fire up to do the transfer to use only a patch cord to transfer information to a live computer hard drive. Maybe I'm wrong, but the way I did it, I got the job done and now have an extra external drive for $35.00.

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Jul 18, 2014 21:25:36   #
Indi Loc: L. I., NY, Palm Beach Cty when it's cold.
 
Leon S wrote:
What I bought from Best Buy is a BLAC X docking station. Read the instructions and played with the retrieval. I'm many things, but a computer geek, I'm not. Therefor most people could do the job. I will confess, my wife helped a lot in transferring the info.


The only way I can see this happening; recovering data from a "dead HD," is if the HD was not really dead but the OS was corrupt, which would leave the data intact.

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Jul 18, 2014 21:35:02   #
Leon S Loc: Minnesota
 
sarge69 wrote:
A computer can die easily. Hard Drives are a bit harder.

Having a device that plugs into your USB port and also has an IDE ( hard drive connector) end and also a SATA (laptop drive connector) lets you plug into any drive (out of the laptop or computer) and access the data. Even on a boot C Drive and then copy the info onto your drive or an external drive.

I value mine so much I bought a backup for it so I'll always have that option to move files around no matter what.

As I said, I'm not a computer guy. Give me a fleet of semi's and I'll either fix them or start a new UPS service. By using what you have described, will that work with a computer/lap top that refuses to fire up. I could possible see how it would work if you remove the hard drive from the dead computer,and definitely if taking info off a working machine.

Sarge69
A computer can die easily. Hard Drives are a bit h... (show quote)

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Jul 18, 2014 21:38:53   #
blackest Loc: Ireland
 
These days most drives are sata which is an improvement over ide drives (2.5 ide drives had a 44 pin header and 3.5 40 pin + a separate power connector).

so with a relatively modern desktop system you could disconnect the dvd drive and use the power and data cables to connect the 2.5 sata drive from the laptop (they use the same connectors) boot up the desktop system and you should have a new drive on your system which is your dead laptops drive. which you can now read and write from.

pretty good chance that you can choose the boot menu on startup or go into the bios and change the boot order and you can boot up with the laptop drive, chances are it will need to update drivers and it may need windows activating but you would have your desktop kind of turned into your laptop for that session.

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