Getting info from an old hard drive

WLM21

My old desktop PC will no longer boot up, so it has been 'sent to Coventry' or at least the bottom of the wardrobe.

Is there any way of taking out the old hard drive, joining it to my other PC so I can access data.

I actually need my emails really, as I bought shares online quite a few years ago, but forget a which company I used. They were not the old fashioned 'share certificate' type, but virtual online ones, so without the info, I can not sell them

Thanks

mcfisco

A cheap external HDD caddy should work OK as long as the HDD is serviceable.
You'll need to know whether you have a SATA or IDE old disc

googler

There's plenty of visual guides on YouTube and other sites to guide you on physically removing the HDD.

You need to open up the PC or remove the HDD to find if it's an IDE or SATA drive, in order to buy the appropriate USB caddy (one or the other).

Connect the caddy up to another PC, and that PC should see it as an external storage device.

If you downloaded the e-mails from your ISP to the HDD, you won't be able to access them directly without having the same e-mail program running on the second PC, and without amending the program's settings to point at the folder on the now external HDD.

You may be able to find the mailbox files by using a search for some term you know will be in the mailbox, such as your address, or the name of the share provider. Once you've found the file, open it up with a plain text program such as Notepad.

If you use a web-based mail provider such as Hotmail, the e-mails won't be stored on the drive unless you saved them as text files.

WLM21

googler wrote: »

If you downloaded the e-mails from your ISP to the HDD, you won't be able to access them directly without having the same e-mail program running on the second PC, and without amending the program's settings to point at the folder on the now external HDD.

You may be able to find the mailbox files by using a search for some term you know will be in the mailbox, such as your address, or the name of the share provider. Once you've found the file, open it up with a plain text program such as Notepad.

If you use a web-based mail provider such as Hotmail, the e-mails won't be stored on the drive unless you saved them as text files.

I used Outlook on the first computer as it was my main email, from my ISP ie '.....@blueyonder.co.uk'

Does this fact make any difference in looking through emails ?

poppellerant

As this is a money saving forum, I am going to suggest buying either a SATA or IDE cable for the harddrive and connect it into your existing PC. But if the drive is already in a computer, it will have these cables already - so far, not a penny spent!

SATA is fairly easy - plug power and data leads in and off you go.

IDE isn't so simple. Make sure your computer's existing harddrive is at the end of the IDE cable and set to Master or Cable Select. Now take the harddrive you want to add into the computer, and make sure it is set to Slave and plugs into the middle of the IDE cable.

An IDE cable is easy to identify. It is a wide ribbon cable and sometimes a pain to work with!

mcfisco

WLM21 wrote: »

I used Outlook on the first computer as it was my main email, from my ISP ie '.....@blueyonder.co.uk'

Does this fact make any difference in looking through emails ?

The Outlook file should be located here
C:\Documents and Settings\LOGON NAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\Outlook.pst

Replace LOGON NAME with your own & the drive letter to suit
You should be able to open the pst file in Outlook OK

WLM21

thanks for the info.

macman

Did you not keep a back up of the original data though?
Try the caddy solution first. If that fails, you are looking at forensic recovery, which starts at about £350.