Need help recovering laptop hard drive
By
Back_Blast,
Posted on: 2010-05-03 18:36 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
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Originally Posted by Finduilas
I need to send a laptop back for warranty service,
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| I know I have to take it out of the laptop, |
Having said that, yes, you can get an external hard drive enclosure. They're dirt cheap since it's just a case, a small circuit board and some connectors.
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I was concerned about the warranty too, so asked the rep on the phone that gave me the RMA about it. He said removing the hard drive to back it up wouldn't void the warranty. |
Originally Posted by Ironblade
Right off, I see a problem. Unless I'm mistaken, disassembling the laptop will generally void your warranty. Certainly, the last couple that I've owned had stickers covering key screws with a warning to that effect.
Having said that, yes, you can get an external hard drive enclosure. They're dirt cheap since it's just a case, a small circuit board and some connectors. |
I know it's a SATA drive, and I see that the options are for 2.5" and 3.5" drives...I'm guessing it's a 2.5" since space is at a premium on a laptop. At this point, I mostly want to make sure there's not something special I need to get or whether any 2.5" SATA drive enclosure would work.
Thanks for your help!
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Hard drives are almost universally considered customer removable units. I bought a $25 device that allows me to hook up standard desktop and laptop IDE and SATA drives through a USB interface. Looks kind of like this one.
Your laptop manufacturer's website probably has detailed instructions on hard drive removal for your system.
Be well, people of CoH.
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Pull it out and plug it in to another computer. All SATA drives use the same connectors. Any 2.5" enclosure will work, as will most 3.5" enclosures and all desktop computers with SATA connectors.
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Originally Posted by Finduilas
I know it's a SATA drive, and I see that the options are for 2.5" and 3.5" drives...I'm guessing it's a 2.5" since space is at a premium on a laptop. At this point, I mostly want to make sure there's not something special I need to get or whether any 2.5" SATA drive enclosure would work.
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If you do go straight to a desktop with a sata cable, don't forget to also hook up the power cable. Windows has a hard time accessing non-powered sata drives... as my brother found out recently.
Be well, people of CoH.
Thanks, Bill, I'll look for one of those tomorrow...I'm hoping Radio Shack has one. (I'll order from Newegg if I have to, but it's my daughter's laptop and she wants it out and back ASAP.)
Thanks again!
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Actually, Katie's right. Unless you think you'd have a use for an adapter like that in the future, don't bother. Just yank the HD from the laptop, shutdown your desktop, grab a sata data and power cable, hook them directly to the laptop HD, boot up the desktop, copy your data over, shutdown, reinstall into laptop, ship it out.
Be well, people of CoH.
What is the brand and model of the laptop?
I ask because if it's a dell then it's possible that the drive has been formatted in a non standard manner and won't be readable by non dell computers. I found this out when a dell of mine failed and I went to put the drive in a different system. It worked fine in an older dell but my new system couldn't read it till I reformatted it.
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So I can put it in the extra drive bay of my desktop? That would be great, no purchase required! (And thanks for the tip about the power cable.)
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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
If you do go straight to a desktop with a sata cable, don't forget to also hook up the power cable. Windows has a hard time accessing non-powered sata drives... as my brother found out recently.
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It's an MSI, so unless there's something I need to know about them, I'll try the desktop drive bay trick.
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Originally Posted by Mandu
What is the brand and model of the laptop?
I ask because if it's a dell then it's possible that the drive has been formatted in a non standard manner and won't be readable by non dell computers. I found this out when a dell of mine failed and I went to put the drive in a different system. It worked fine in an older dell but my new system couldn't read it till I reformatted it. |
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Dell is pretty much the only company that still does non-standard things with their hardware these days, and even they've mostly given up on it.
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Yeah, I replaced the power supply on an old Dell desktop a few years ago and I remember I had to buy a special, Dell-compatible replacement. Kind of a PITA considering it was fairly expensive. Glad to hear they're getting away from that.|
Originally Posted by Katie V
Dell is pretty much the only company that still does non-standard things with their hardware these days, and even they've mostly given up on it.
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Thanks for your help!
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Just wanted to give an update and a big THANK YOU! to everyone who provided assistance and advice.
Once I figured out where the hard drive was in the laptop, getting it out and moved to my desktop was very simple and straightforward. The biggest problem I had was that the power cable to my regular hard drive came disconnected if you breathed on it wrong, so I spent a lot of time reconnecting it and hoping it would stay connected when I moved the computer.
So the data is recovered, and the laptop packed up and ready to ship. Thanks again, everyone!
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I have that exact gizmo here at work. Works like a charm.|
Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
Hard drives are almost universally considered customer removable units. I bought a $25 device that allows me to hook up standard desktop and laptop IDE and SATA drives through a USB interface. Looks kind of like this one.
Your laptop manufacturer's website probably has detailed instructions on hard drive removal for your system. |
Glad you managed to save your data Finduilas. Hope they can get you fixed up pronto.
It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination.
So this is only kinda sorta a CoH problem, but I'm hoping for some advice/suggestions.
I need to send a laptop back for warranty service, but I'd like to get some data off the hard drive first. (The hard drive is fine, but the laptop screen won't work, most likely a graphics card problem. Hooking it up to an external monitor didn't work.)
The company says they probably won't need to erase the hard drive, but I'd prefer to get a copy of the data before sending it off.
What's the best way to do this? I know I have to take it out of the laptop, but what then? I believe you can buy enclosures for hard drives that would allow me to read the data and copy it elsewhere, but I have no idea what to look for.
TIA for any help!
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