notebook..need to get info off, but broken screen...

brians_daughter

Hi all, just a quick one i hope someone can help. My brother has dropped her netbook and as a result the screen has gone all funny..frozen and pixalated..anyhow, he has work for uni on there that he needs to get off asap, He did back it up to a USB stick but for some reason my laptop isnt recognising the usb stick (thats a whole new thread tho lol).

the netbook is going away for repair but it wont be back for 3 weeks and uni wont give him an extention on the work for IT problems...does anyone know how i can get the info off the hard drive for him pls?

We have never tried to do anything like this before, so you will have to go easy on us!

enigma52

connect netbook to external monitor. then transfer what he needs onto a pendrive, simples

kwikbreaks

As above except I see you've had trouble with that.

Other options are...

try to connect it to your router and copy the data to another machine, or even just email it.

Get a caddy for the correct drive type (2.5inch SATA or IDE) then remove the drive (may need to google how) and put it in the caddy.

Russel245

To make it easy, I would try to get that USB working. Otherwise you're going to need to get the hard drive out of the machine, and plug it into another device.

It isn't complicated (to me) but there's a lot of small steps that could prove problematic, if you have a friend on a computing course, or since you're at uni you may even be able to talk to somebody in the IT department not to mention it could be worth contacting a computing society.

Failing that a computing shop (ideally not PC world) should be able to get the data off easily enough.

Also, "your brother dropped her laptop"... interesting.

googler

DON'T SEND IT AWAY FOR REPAIR WITH THE HARD DRIVE IN IT.

See recent threads here where people have lost valuable data when PCs have gone in for repair to incompetent repairers.

Take the hard drive out, and either install it in a caddy and connect to another PC, or install as a secondary drive in any desktop PC. Lots of video guides on YouTube, lots of non-video guides and advice out there on the interweb.

brians_daughter

Thanks all, we have been told if he sends it back for repair with data on there is a chance it may get lost...so another reason to get the data asap! Will try and connect to another monitor and could email over to his uni account then he can access where ever he chooses!

Pauls

Could be a long shot, but If he uses wireless you may be able to just map a drive.

You'd have to log in to the router login page (using your machine) and look for 'attached devices' this sould give you the IP address of all devices attached to the network (something like 192.168.0.1). One of these would be the knackered lappy.

The you just dive in to windows explorer (not Internet Explorer), go to the tools menu and select 'map network drive'. Once you've done this, you just need to pick a spare drive letter and specify \\196.168.0.1\C$ in the empty space below it. You may need to specify a your bro's user name/password if he uses them to log in to his machine.

That should be it

macman

Just whip the hard drive out and place in a USB hard drive caddy. That can then be plugged into any other PC and the drive will appear as would any USB drive. By far the easiest method.
NB: USB flash drives are fine for transporting files around, but should never be used for back up. Too fragile a media, too easy to lose.

howmuchcaniget

This isn't any good but for future reference I would definately install Dropbox on your c, this will auto save the work to the "Cloud" then you will never loose work (only draw back is it is limited to 2 gb so only store the work you are currently working on.

This is what I do I also use syncback freeware to auto save my work every night, once a week to another folder and once a month to a third folder. (also offers ftp sync so you can save on another pc with apache running too).

Retrospective I know but good practice for the future...

spud17

He did back it up to a USB stick but for some reason my laptop isnt recognising the usb stick

Is his/her netbook running Linux?