Need some information of an quondam hard disk drive drive? Unfortunately, it'south not easy to connect a drive to your PC. So, what can yous do when you need to call back those old spreadsheets, or forgotten digital photos?

Hither are some useful and practical ways you tin can connect your hard bulldoze to your electric current computer and recover data from it.

How to Become Data Off a Difficult Drive

Getting your data off an onetime hd drive is easier than you think. If the device has been disconnected from its original PC and kept free from knocks, the data should be retrieved with relative ease.

Y'all have six options to connect an old HDD to your computer:

  1. Connect it using a special USB adapter cablevision
  2. Hack an external HDD
  3. Build your own external HDD
  4. Apply a USB docking station for disk drives
  5. Install the disk in your PC
  6. Install the HDD in a laptop

Some of these methods are simpler than others. Let's look at each of them in turn.

1. Access an Onetime Hard Bulldoze With an Adapter

Copy data from an old hard disk drive with an adapter

A difficult disk drive can be straight connected to any PC via a special USB HDD adapter. These typically come with connections for SATA and IDE/PATA drives.

HDDs currently use the SATA connectedness, which is a minor "Fifty" shaped connector and a thin, apartment cablevision. These drives are powered using a slightly wider "L" connector, or a Molex iv-pivot connector.

IDE/PATA drives, meanwhile, rely on a much wider ribbon cable connector, along with a Molex connector.

Employing a USB cable adapter for your HDD means identifying the correct connection type and plugging in the HDD. Fo case, if you had an old IDE/PATA deejay drive, you would connect the IDE/PATA adapter port to the drive, then the Molex plug to the mains adapter. Afterwards connecting the adapter to the PC via USB, switch it on.

The drive would be detected as a USB device by the operating system, ready for you to scan.

This solution lets you connect a PC hard disk drive to a desktop or a laptop.

two. How to Hack an External HDD to Get Information off an Old Hard Drive

Reuse an External hard drive case

Perhaps you have an external HDD with a USB connexion. Within, the device basically contains a SATA-to-USB cable adapter.

Then, how can you get files off a hard bulldoze with an external HDD?

External hd drives basically contain of a minor circuit board with SATA connectors to dock the drive, and an enclosure. By opening the enclosure and removing the screws securing the existing drive, yous can easily bandy it with your quondam HDD.

With everything connected and secure, connect the drive to your PC, power it up, and get-go retrieving data. Don't forget to replace the original HDD into the external drive housing when you lot're washed.

Before doing this, annotation that opening the bulldoze upward could invalidate the device's warranty.

3. Mount the HDD Into an External Enclosure

Use an enclosure to connect your HDD to a PC or laptop

Planning on accessing this hd regularly? If and so, it makes sense to buy an external HDD enclosure, and install your disk bulldoze in this.

This is really a similar footstep to hacking your existing external HDD. The simply difference is that the enclosure should ship with some instructions on how to install the drive. Y'all'll as well need to confirm the enclosure is the right size to accomodate your disk drive. Remember, HDDs come in 2.5-inch and 3.v-inch varieties.

In one case you lot've installed the HDD in the new enclosure, simply connect it to your PC via USB, ability information technology up, and outset retrieving your information.

The do good of this choice is that once you've plant recovered the missing data, you can use the disk equally an external HDD. Connect a reformatted bulldoze to whatsoever figurer or media device as external storage.

4. Browse for Data Using a USB Docking Station

Copy data from a hard disk drive
Image Credit: pmsyyz/Flickr

A quick an easy pick for connecting one-time hard deejay drives to your PC is a USB docking station.

This is a device that sits on your desk and plugs into the reckoner's USB port. Inside the docking station, you'll detect SATA connectors (and sometimes IDE/PATA connectors) that the deejay bulldoze can be plugged into. The drives essentially slide into the docking station in an upright position, providing admission to the contents over USB.

Think of it as a hard drive reader.

Different types of USB docking stations for disk drives are bachelor. Most provide SATA-only connections for three.5-inch and 2.5-inch disk drives.

All in all, this is probably the almost comfortable option and some devices even provide space for multiple HDDs.

Nonetheless, some drives as well include IDE/PATA connectors, although the position of the ability connector on these older drives can cause bug.

five. Install the HDD in Your PC

A hd tin can be straight connected to a PC via a cable directly to the motherboard.

The exact steps will again depend upon the HDD connector type:

  • Connect SATA drives to the motherboard using the SATA cablevision
  • IDE drives use the IDE ribbon cable, and then the motherboard volition need to have a compatible port

If no port uniform with your drive is available, you'll demand a compact adapter pocket-sized enough to fit inside your PC case.

Notation that this isn't a long-term solution. Stop using the adapter one time yous have recovered the data and copied it to a new HDD or SSD.

Of grade, before installing whatever device inside your PC, you should be confident that you know what you lot are doing. With the HDD correctly connected to your PC'south motherboard, it should be safe to power up the computer and scan the device.

6. Install the HDD in a Laptop

About of the options to a higher place can be used with a laptop. Only if you lot desire to connect the hard drive to a laptop internally, things are a little dissimilar.

You have two options here:

  • Install a disk drive in the laptop's defended expansion slot
  • Replace the optical drive with a hd

(Notation that the second solution is less practical for newer laptop computers, which increasingly transport without space for additional deejay drives.)

Our guide on how to connect a hard drive to a laptop using the optical bulldoze will provide more than data.

Now You Know How to Read Old Hard Drives

With your hd drive connected to your computer, it should be plain sailing. All you need to do adjacent is copy the data from the HDD to storage on your PC. As long as at that place is plenty storage space, this shouldn't be a problem.

However, if you're trying to recover lost or deleted data from the HDD, y'all'll demand some recovery software.

One selection is to expect at these recovery tools for Mac and Windows. They're designed to find "deleted" data on a connected device and restore information technology, preferably to a different drive. Alternatively, use a rescue deejay to aid recover data from a difficult drive.

We hope you similar the items nosotros recommend and discuss! MUO has affiliate and sponsored partnerships, then we receive a share of the acquirement from some of your purchases. This won't affect the price you pay and helps the states offer the best product recommendations.

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