ANyone know an easy way to transfer files/date?

[Shazza36]

Posted a couple of weeks ago about the problem we were having with our laptop saying that it wouldn't boot up because of a missing file-well the hard drive is totally corrupt and we're still trying to get our holiday photo's off it and GCSE/AS level course work, my hubby has managed to access the hard drive and is very slowly getting stuff off it onto a flash drive but is there another way of connecting the laptop to either our other laptop or our desktop bearing in mind that the hard drive is knackered so can't change settings etc?? ANy ideas appreciated as we have had enough of it after 2 weeks definately going to try and get both these crap laptops(Packard Bell Easy note), replaced they have been nothing but trouble the other went for a new hard drive and came back without a recovery program and the CD Drive won't work and then it just fell apart last night- the keyboard just fell out. They are under gaurantee and insured so I'm going to start telling Curry's what I think of them. :)

[LeMarchand]

I usually use something like this: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/3-in-1-USB-2-0-To-SATA-I DE-Adapter-Cable-Power-SA1_W0QQitemZ2601419413 94QQihZ016QQcategoryZ74941QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

(picked at random from the selection, though that is quite a good price)

You can also get non-eBay ones at a higher cost: http://www.gizoo.co.uk/Products/PCGaming/PCGad gets/IDESATADriver.htm

Take the hard drive out of the laptop - you may also need to remove any caddy it may be in - and connect via USB to a working machine. If the older drive isn't completely shot it will show up as a removable drive that you can easily copy files from.

You should also be able to connect the 2 laptops via a crossover cable or USB transfer acble (http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/8199/). Never used either method myself, though.