Pc Hard Drive

[patrickstar]

I have a Packard Bell 6810sli that is around 8 plus years old. The graphic cards and the RAM have all but given up meaning the PC often freezes or comes up with the dreaded blue screen. I would like to extract the drives and either copy them or use an external device to hold and power the drives. Most of my data has been backed up but there is some of my children's older homework and other bits that I would like to copy or use for a while yet. What would be the best option to copy or carry on using the drives? An excuse to go to Maplins is always welcomed! I have a laptop that would be my means of linking to what ever device chosen. Thank you

[hc4361]

You need a caddy (also called enclosure) to house the hard drive so that it can be used as an external usb drive. They can be bought for less than £20

[hc4361]

This is the sort of thing but you must be sure you buy the right size for your drive - they come in 2.5" and 3.5" and the right connection.

Amazon.co.uk User Recommendation

[patrickstar]

Thanks hc4361. That sounds perfect. :-)

[VHG]

Why not just copy the homework off the hard disks on to an external hard drive.

And 8 year old PC is likely to have very small hard drives (compared to todays hard drives) so it is hardly worth keeping them.

p.s. if you are going to buy a caddy check if your hard drives are SATA connections or IDE connections (IDE is also called PATA).

Newer hard drives are all SATA, but older hard drives are PATA/IDE and if your PC is that old they may be PATA and the connections are different between SATA and PATA drives.

[Old_Geezer]

Ensure that the interface in the caddy you buy matches the one that connects to your hard drive. Hopefully the interface gives more than one type of socket to connect to, but do check.

[Buenchico]

I'd simply copy the stuff you need to a USB stick and forget about reusing the old hard drive.

However if you're determined to do so then, as has been said, using a caddy to turn the internal drive into an external (USB) one is the way to go. You can buy them for under a tenner but this one accepts both IDE and SATA hard drives:
http://www.pcnation.co.uk/product.aspx?id=5249&af=11

What nobody seems to have mentioned though is that if you simply put your old drive into the caddy and connect it up with a USB cable, most of the files on the disc will seem to have vanished. That's because you need to 'take ownership' of it before you can access all of the data on it. See here for the instructions you'll need:
http://www.techfleece.com/2011/05/15/how-to-take-ownership-of-files-or-folders-or-an-entire-hard-drive/

[beso]

Disconnect your computer from power.

Remove the RAM and replace it. Most problems are caused by the RAM socket contacts and simply reseating fixes the problem.

Then just use a USB flash drive to move your files to a new computer.