Accessing data on old PC

Moonraker71

Hi there. Very un-techie person here.
I'm hopefully moving house soon and starting to clear a lot of clutter. I have an old PC that was once top of the range but died a few yrs ago. I still have the tower unit (no monitor) because I was hoping I might be able to salvage my music and photos from the hard drive. No, it wasn't backed up and yes I've learned my lesson
There's more than 1,000 albums on there and about 5,000 photos. Is there anything I can do about it? The computer doesn't turn on and I wouldn't know where to start by trying to take the hard drive out. Thanks for any advice.

neilwoods

Could take the drive out, place in a HDD enclosure, and use as an external drive. Just need to work out if IDE or SATA

googler

Taking a hard drive out is easy, as long as you can use a screwdriver and can take a couple of plugs out of their sockets.

There are guides all over the inter web, including video guides on YouTube and similar places.

macman

Of course this assumes that it was not the hard drive that 'died'. If so, then putting it into a caddy won't help. However, that's the first thing to try, as it will cost you a tenner at most.
If no luck, then forensic data recovery starts at about £350.

Moonraker71

Thanks all. I'll get googling and try that. Don't think it was the hard drive itself that died. What happened was that one day, the computer just wouldn't turn on any more. I'd press the button and it would make a sound like firing up and then shutting down again, all in the space of about 2 seconds. I was told it was likely the motherboard, but I really don't know for sure.

Spankey

be carefull when ordering and order the correct connector type for your harddrive , IDE or SATA.

if it does both then you have no problems

Sata .....small data lead (red) here but could be black/blue/?????







IDE......big fat grey/black/blue.. wide lead .

Oblivion

Spankey wrote: »

be carefull when ordering and order the correct connector type for your harddrive , IDE or SATA.

if it does both then you have no problems

Sata .....small data lead (red) here but could be black/blue/?????







IDE......big fat grey/black/blue.. wide lead .

This caddy seems to do both IDE and SATA and apparently comes with leads for both.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/CiT-3-5-inch-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B00647A4KY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1365439842&sr=8-3&keywords=hard+drive+caddy+3.5

johnmc

Take a look on Ebay for "SATA to IDE USB", loads for about £3.