Fry Me Twice

August 30, 2013 11:44 AM

Daughter has again introduced liquids to the innards of a laptop computer. This time a 1.5 y/o Macbook Pro. She wiped it off, assumed it was fine, but then it slowly and inevitably died. She is showing up at my house in a few days with the still-viable hard drive, which the Apple Store removed for her. I have a 3 terabite external hard drive and a Macbook Pro. Can someone tell, or link me to how to get her files off her hard drive and onto this external drive?

Can I partition this drive since I have some (possibly) useful PC files on it, or do I have to wipe it, which would not be a huge loss? What cables will I need to get her hard drive spinning and yielding its files?

posted by Danf to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

You need an external hard drive enclosure. They sell for about $20 and are easy to use. Then you can hook it up to your computer and use it as an external drive. I've done this with several drives over the years and it's a breeze.
posted by kdern at 11:59 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]

You need an External hard drive enclosure. (First result from my search - there are many others.) (On preview - beaten to it!)
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:01 PM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]

Don't buy the external hard drive enclosure linked by RedOrGreen — it only supports 3.5" SATA drives. The hard drive from your daughter's MacBook Pro will be a 2.5" laptop-style SATA hard drive. I'd recommend this $20 USB enclosure for 2.5" hard drives from OWC.
posted by RichardP at 12:39 PM on August 30, 2013 [3 favorites]

Personally I prefer drive docking stations.

They are more handy than enclosures if you think she may fry computers 5 and 6 or if you ever want to get creative.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:52 PM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]

You don't have to get an enclosure, one of these sata to usb adapters will do the job
posted by kenchie at 12:55 PM on August 30, 2013

(Good point RichardP, I didn't think about drive sizes.)
posted by RedOrGreen at 12:55 PM on August 30, 2013

RichardP, RedOrGreen's link should work fine with 2.5" drives, at least the photos and description say that it will. Moreover, 3.5" and 2.5" generally use the same connector. I've recovered data from plenty of drives using the working end of an enclosure that didn't even have mounting holes for a 2.5" drive.

That said, I'd suggest going with the USB/SATA adapters intended for temporary use because they (can be) smaller and easier to store.
posted by Good Brain at 1:39 PM on August 30, 2013