Can I gain access to my email using my old harddrive?
August 25, 2020 2:25 PM Subscribe
I can't log in on a new device
So gmail has this thing that if you try to log in at a new device it makes you verify the email with your phone number. The problem is that I never actually put in a phone number for verification. They kept asking me for it and I never put it in. Recently I threw away my computer Except for it's harddrive- which I removed and kept. If I attach the harddrive to another device will I be allowed to sign into my gmail? Because technically that's the same device, right?
Honestly it's not the end of the world if I can't get into my gmail account since I've been wanting to do away with google for a while anyway, but there is a phone number in one of my emails that I'd like to get to.
So gmail has this thing that if you try to log in at a new device it makes you verify the email with your phone number. The problem is that I never actually put in a phone number for verification. They kept asking me for it and I never put it in. Recently I threw away my computer Except for it's harddrive- which I removed and kept. If I attach the harddrive to another device will I be allowed to sign into my gmail? Because technically that's the same device, right?
Honestly it's not the end of the world if I can't get into my gmail account since I've been wanting to do away with google for a while anyway, but there is a phone number in one of my emails that I'd like to get to.
Have you actually tried to login from the new device? It seems unlikely that the fine folks at google would set it up to send an SMS message to a non-existent number...
That said, if you can boot the old OS (more then just attaching it to the new computer, but *booting* it from the new computer to have access to a browser that was still logged in) then yes, you should be able to get into your email, same as always. That said, time may be of the essence as those cookies that keep you logged in don't last forever.
Some info on Google account recovery (including when it is or is not possible) is here: https://support.google.com/accounts/thread/2307038
posted by tiamat at 3:47 PM on August 25, 2020 [1 favorite]
That said, if you can boot the old OS (more then just attaching it to the new computer, but *booting* it from the new computer to have access to a browser that was still logged in) then yes, you should be able to get into your email, same as always. That said, time may be of the essence as those cookies that keep you logged in don't last forever.
Some info on Google account recovery (including when it is or is not possible) is here: https://support.google.com/accounts/thread/2307038
posted by tiamat at 3:47 PM on August 25, 2020 [1 favorite]
According to your posting history you've had a laptop, a desktop, and an Android phone. Assuming you have used your Google account one or more of these, I would suggest trying to update your security settings at: https://myaccount.google.com/
posted by tiamat at 3:55 PM on August 25, 2020
posted by tiamat at 3:55 PM on August 25, 2020
What OS is on the drive?
If it was on a Dell desktop, another Dell desktop might work. No guarantees. But I have done this.
posted by theora55 at 6:33 PM on August 25, 2020
If it was on a Dell desktop, another Dell desktop might work. No guarantees. But I have done this.
posted by theora55 at 6:33 PM on August 25, 2020
I assume this was a Windows PC you have the drive from. I've done this a bunch of times, it shouldn't really be a problem. Back in the bad old Windows XP days you'd be likely to have a ton of problems trying this, but Win7 onward handle it much better. A couple of caveats:
- If you have another drive in your system (for files or whatever) then Windows might insist on doing a disk scan, if you're switching from Win10 to Win7 or something along those lines. I think this has to do with different versions of NTFS (the Windows filesystem). Harmless as far as I know, but you might want to disconnect any other drives just in case. I had this come up recently when I was swapping between Win10 and Win7 to use some old hardware.
- You might have to reboot a few times so Windows gets its ducks in a row vis-a-vis its "new" hardware configuration. I've even gotten bluescreens at this point, but they clear up for me.
- Windows might decide it's "non-genuine" with the new hardware configuration. This is ignorable, there aren't really any consequences aside from the nagging.
- If you connect to internet using wifi, you might want to download the wifi drivers for your current PC (for the OS that's on your old drive) and put them on a USB stick. Lots of wifi chipsets don't work out of the box in Windows. If you connect via an Ethernet cable then this is less likely to happen. (If you have a spare PC you can download any necessary drivers on when you need them, you don't really need to worry about this ahead of time.)
- If it's been a little while, then Google might insist on re-authenticating you anyways. IME Google is a bit less strict about this than some other services though. It's worth a try.
If I attach the harddrive to another device will I be allowed to sign into my gmail? Because technically that's the same device, right?
Correct. Browsers (and Google) don't care about your hardware configuration. Google might notice shenanigans if you tried to use the same authentication token (kept by your browser) on a different OS, since this is reported by the Web browser in the user-agent string, but you're using the same OS as before so this shouldn't be a concern. I doubt Google even checks this, since people upgrade their OS all the time.
posted by neckro23 at 8:53 AM on August 26, 2020
- If you have another drive in your system (for files or whatever) then Windows might insist on doing a disk scan, if you're switching from Win10 to Win7 or something along those lines. I think this has to do with different versions of NTFS (the Windows filesystem). Harmless as far as I know, but you might want to disconnect any other drives just in case. I had this come up recently when I was swapping between Win10 and Win7 to use some old hardware.
- You might have to reboot a few times so Windows gets its ducks in a row vis-a-vis its "new" hardware configuration. I've even gotten bluescreens at this point, but they clear up for me.
- Windows might decide it's "non-genuine" with the new hardware configuration. This is ignorable, there aren't really any consequences aside from the nagging.
- If you connect to internet using wifi, you might want to download the wifi drivers for your current PC (for the OS that's on your old drive) and put them on a USB stick. Lots of wifi chipsets don't work out of the box in Windows. If you connect via an Ethernet cable then this is less likely to happen. (If you have a spare PC you can download any necessary drivers on when you need them, you don't really need to worry about this ahead of time.)
- If it's been a little while, then Google might insist on re-authenticating you anyways. IME Google is a bit less strict about this than some other services though. It's worth a try.
If I attach the harddrive to another device will I be allowed to sign into my gmail? Because technically that's the same device, right?
Correct. Browsers (and Google) don't care about your hardware configuration. Google might notice shenanigans if you tried to use the same authentication token (kept by your browser) on a different OS, since this is reported by the Web browser in the user-agent string, but you're using the same OS as before so this shouldn't be a concern. I doubt Google even checks this, since people upgrade their OS all the time.
posted by neckro23 at 8:53 AM on August 26, 2020
Its looking for cookies and probably other browser specific stuff (possibly user agent) from your old computer youd need to get the drive to boot into its operating system and run the same browser for it to have a chance of working. Attaching the drive as a extra data drive would probably take a bunch of surgery to get to work.
posted by TheAdamist at 9:13 AM on August 26, 2020
posted by TheAdamist at 9:13 AM on August 26, 2020
This thread is closed to new comments.
It's not clear from your information, but if you had previously set up 2FA and it's looking for that sort of confirmation, the options here could help too.
posted by sagc at 3:20 PM on August 25, 2020