interfacing hard drives

September 21, 2008 10:19 PM

my dad has a dell laptop and has recently replaced the hard drive, how would he retrieve info(e.g. pix) off of the old hard drive and onto some other type of storage device, flash card or such. are there places near burlington, WA that can do this?
posted by docmccoy to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Just about any "mom 'n' pop" computer store will do a data transfer for you from an old hard drive. They usually just stick the drive in an external USB-powered chassis and suck the info off it - you might want to just look into getting an external housing for your dad anyway, as one can never have too much disk space and it would come in handy for backups etc.
posted by turgid dahlia at 10:35 PM on September 21, 2008

Err forgot to add that these external housings are extremely affordable and very easy to put together yourself and would likely cost less than the standalone data transfer.
posted by turgid dahlia at 10:36 PM on September 21, 2008

If the harddrive still works, he can get a cheap usb enclosure (they run about $20) that will make his old harddrive into an exteranal usb drive. Then he can hook it up to his computer.
posted by fingo at 10:37 PM on September 21, 2008

Response by poster: thanx a bunch guys, god i love this site!!!!!!!!!!
posted by docmccoy at 10:40 PM on September 21, 2008

All that's been said above is true, but if you're going the external USB enclosure route and it is a hard drive pulled from a laptop, you might also want to google on "2.5 hard drive 3.5 adapter".

You should be able to pull the parts together for $20-$30. Check Newegg, for example. Incidentally, I use my enclosure several times a year, whenever my friends' drives die. If you want to drive 64.2 mi south (about 1 hour 7 mins), I'd do it for beer(s) and a pizza.
posted by shunshine at 11:19 PM on September 21, 2008

Response by poster: may have to take you up on that, wont go to see him til early october though, in portland right now, hard drives in burlington. gonna check into to getting my own first
posted by docmccoy at 11:47 PM on September 21, 2008

I just upgraded the HDD in my own Dell laptop, actually - used this enclosure, worked great. Comes with the USB cable, etc...
posted by brandman at 5:22 AM on September 22, 2008

Enclosures tend to only suit one sort of drive, but you can get usb 2.0 cables which will do 2.5" ide, 3.5" ide and sata all in one.

here's a random example
posted by onya at 12:04 PM on September 22, 2008