Hardware Others is there a way to recover a old laptop HDD drive files?

DJPlace

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i have couple of these

715pzxY+l1L._AC_SL1500_.jpg


sorry for the size...


but i want to know if i can recover the files from them. i don't recall how big they are.... is there something USB Releated that i can use?
 

FAST6191

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If they are SATA based (look at the connectors, they will be L shaped) then any SATA port should handle them. You can buy USB adapters as well, I normally just buy a caddy and use that instead. If you have a dead external hard drive then might be worth opening that as up as it could well be sata internally.
If they are IDE (lot of pins*, would be quite old at this point). You can buy simple adapters to turn it into PC IDE and use it in that, or you can get readers for it (do check it comes with a laptop drive option or adapter, most will if they are readers, less so if they are caddies). Again if you have a now probably very old external hard drive that died it might be worth looking at that if you wanted the cheap option.
Modern computers have shifted to m.2 for drive formats (look like little sticks about a quarter as wide as the picture you have there) which have their own readers if you want to gear up to computer fixing man for your circles.

*some models of laptop had adapters to turn pins into other things, usually custom to that maker/model/line, you will need to remove this to work in most/basically all readers and keep it if you want to use the laptop it came from again.

Other than that you can't really just shove a drive into a windows computer and have it read files like it is a USB drive as it will have permissions to worry about. In which case takeown and icacls
https://community.spiceworks.com/to...nt-permission-recursively-with-icacls-takeown

If this is for someone else do ask them what they care about as it can vary dramatically (I have never used a pictures folder, others use it religiously and it is their life/would cry if a single solitary file was lost) and most people do actually care about their browser settings and history if you can get that back for them which can be more of a faff than is ideal. I once had to recover an Outlook autocomplete as someone had used it as a quasi address book. Fonts can also be an interesting one if someone has installed a lot of custom ones.
 
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KleinesSinchen

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FAST6191

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Seems we can answer the question for SATA with "yes" for the model on the picture:
https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com...nal-specialty/pc/articles/mq01abd-series.html

To solve the problem with old laptop HDDs once and for all, I got this one a couple of years ago:
View attachment 360368 View attachment 360369
Nice because it supports IDE and SATA 2.5" HDDs.

For the baseline use case (ignoring that I am junking m.2 laptops these days for being too old) then yeah.

If you are going to get a bit more into it then something internal helps as some of the spinning rust drive bearings need that little bit more kick to get going in the morning.
 

KleinesSinchen

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If you are going to get a bit more into it then something internal helps as some of the spinning rust drive bearings need that little bit more kick to get going in the morning.
Got a laptop (if you want to call it that way… about 10kg) with 80386 CPU and a 3.5" HDD (200MB). To get it to spin up it always needed a strong and targeted hit against the computer. No idea if it still works. Probably not considering the age.

Edit:
amstrad386-jpg.158173
 
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godreborn

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sata station. that's what I used to format a couple of drives from dead computers as well as get my parents' tax information from one of them.
 

The Real Jdbye

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i have couple of these

715pzxY+l1L._AC_SL1500_.jpg


sorry for the size...


but i want to know if i can recover the files from them. i don't recall how big they are.... is there something USB Releated that i can use?
If you have a desktop, you can plug them into a spare SATA port on your motherboard and SATA power cable from your PSU.
I usually don't bother with that, a USB enclosure is much easier.
If you have one of those Seagate 2.5" USB HDDs with a removable SATA adapter you can simply unplug the SATA adapter (no disassembly required) and plug it into your drive.
If you have any older 2.5" USB HDD, chances are it has a SATA adapter inside and you could disassemble it and put any drive in it or take the adapter board out and use it outside the enclosure. They can be a pain to disassemble though. A laptop died on me before I had a proper USB enclosure so I used a butter knife to pry open a external 2.5" HDD I had to put the laptop drive into it so I could access the files, but damaged the plastic shell a bit.
Newer ones often have USB coming directly out of the internal drive inside so there is no SATA adapter board.
I had an older 2.5" enclosure I was using but bought 2 of these (the USB-C model) as my old one was only USB 2.0, USB 3.x results in about a 2.5x increase in read/write speed:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32815404045.html
Reasonable price, easy disassembly (no screws) to insert or swap the drive, and having 2 of them comes in handy when I want to transfer files from one drive to another.
Note that USB-SATA adapters (including the ones in enclosures) will only work with laptop drives or SSDs, not larger 3.5" desktop drives, they draw far too much power. You can get ones with a wall adapter for power or get one of those HDD docking stations if you would like something more universal but for your current needs, a simple USB one will work.
 
Last edited by The Real Jdbye,

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