Old Pc Hard Drive

[gettinblurry]

I've recently binned an old (dead) PC that's been sitting in the bottom of the wardrobe for maybe 10 years. Given its age, there's nothing too important on it but more out of interest than security (there may be some photos tucked away in a corner somewhere) I saved the hard drive, on the off-chance I could somehow connect it to one of my more modern devices (one day!).
I'm guessing if it is possible, the laptop rather than Nexus tablet or cheap-ass mobile phone would be preferable.
Any simple ideas? Or have I been suckered by watching too much of Abby & McGee on NCIS?!

[Spannerfiend]

It will probably be an old IDE drive from a 10 year old PC. You can get a shiny new hard drive housing off eBay for about 6 quid, pop the drive in (the pins are already fitted), and then access it via its usb connection. My Computer will show it up as a removeable drive.

[Spannerfiend]

Meant to say, it will almost certainly be a 3.5" (width) size.....but check. The 2.5" ones are mostly for smaller laptop drives.

[VHG]

Older hard drives had IDE connectors (sometimes called PATA).

Newer hard drive have a SATA connector.

So you need to buy a pc caddy (case) with an IDE connector and put the hard drive in that. This makes it like an external hard drive.

You then just plug it in the USB port of any new computer and look at the files on the old disk.

You can copy across any you want to keep from the old hard drive to your computer.

[wildwood]

Once you've got the stuff off the HDD that you want, you may want to consider donating the old comp to some organisation that refurbishes them and gives them to others that can't afford one.

[gettinblurry]

Thanks all - seems pretty simple and it does appear to be an IDE drive.
I'll have crack at it this weekend.

Wildwood - never even occurred to me to donate it but at least it's gone for recycling.

Blurry