IT Guru Help: Broken PC + No Back-up

[TamSV]

My PC has died and I didn't back-up my files. Yes, I know.

I'm pretty certain it's the power that's kaput so I've removed the hard drive which I think is probably still OK.

I don't have another PC but do have a laptop. Would it be possible to connect the hard drive to the laptop like an external HD and copy over my files? I just want to recover the photos that are on there.

[maviczap]

Yes, I did this for someone.

What type of connection on the HDD?

IDE or SATA

I have a USB to IDE connector, plus the power lead

[TamSV]

It says IDE on the label so I suppose that's what it is. 2 rows of 20 pins.

I'll have a google later on and see if I can get one of those cables. Cheers.

[kaivalagi]

Yeah, they're cheap enough on ebay and useful to have, just make sure to get a power supply also if you don't have anything to power the harddrive. You may want to search on ebay for an adapter that handles ide and sata just so you have something for the longer term. I think about £10 should get something with a power supply.

[JamesMio]

If it's IDE - like this:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-I8nLSRuiMjY/UWjgCiApgFI/AAAAAAAAAHU/CJFMhYXA6Dc/s1600/sata-ide-laptop-hard-drive.jpg

Then you can stick it into any other PC that's also got a IDE hard drive as a slave of the original (master) one.

Dead easy - only thing to check is there's a little jumper that sits on the pins which tells the disk whether it's the main (master) one to boot Windows from, or a secondary one (slave). http://www.pcstats.com/articleimages/200504/hddinstall_jump.jpg

I 'think' my PC here is SATA, otherwise you could just post me the drive and I'll grab your photos off it for you (wouldn't even look through your holiday snaps and post anything incriminating on Facebook, either - that's just how nice a guy I am!)

[maviczap]

Tam, if you want to borrow mine, drop me a PM

[TamSV]

Cheers guys. It doesn't look quite like either of the drives in your first pic James. Looks exactly like the one in your second though. So is that IDE?

Not being entirely sure, I ordered a combined IDE/SATA cable with a power supply off the bay last night for a few quid so I'll see if I can manage it.

Thanks for your kind offers.

The easiest thing would probably be just to take it to someone who knows what they're doing. For some reason I like to try and do things myself first. It often works out more expensive that way. :p

Nothing incriminating in the photos I don't think. The browsing history/temp files might be another matter....;)

[kaivalagi]

You made the best choice, it's not rocket science, once you've done it once it's easy and you have all you need for this type of thing again. Also now you have this adapter you can use the old PC hard drive as a backup device for your laptop!

Plug the power and IDE adapter into the drive, you can't go wrong with connections, then switch on the power and then plug the USB in to your laptop, you should see a drive (or several depending on your partitioning scheme) and be able to copy data on/off through explorer.

I am sure if you get stuck any of us posting here will be able to help you though...

[TamSV]

The cable arrived promptly from e-bay today.

I eagerly plugged in the power supply and heard the old hard drive spinning up. Connected the USB plug to the laptop and had access to all my files for a few minutes.

I couldn't open or transfer the files so while I was trying to figure out what to do next, I lost access to the drive.

A message popped up "A USB device has exceeded the power limits of its hub port". As instructed I disconnected the hard drive and reset the USB port.

Problem is I can't get any further. As soon as I plug it in I get the "exceeded the power limits" message. I would have thought as I'm getting mains power to the hard drive it shouldn't be trying to draw more from the USB port?

Any thoughts?

[Mark_h]

USB ports can't supply a lot of power. Even if the drive is being powered externally the interface widget will be being powered from the laptop and if you went for the cheapest one it is probably not particarly power effecient. Not the end of the world, you just need a powered usb2 hub. That way the power to the drive is supplied by the hub and not your laptop. Not expensive off eBay but make sure you get usb2 usb1 will work but will be very slow.

Also worth unplugging any other USB devices in case it's a cumulative consumption problem.

[kaivalagi]

Yeah try using it with nothing else plugged into USB, not had this problem myself with my cheap powered adapter, so hopefully it's just that other USB devices were drawing power at the same time...

[Littlepeahead]

For future backing up, Photobox allow you to save images with them and then if required you can order a CD or DVD at a later date. Or prints, posters or mugs if you are that way inclined. It's a quick, free solution to backing them up if you don't have thousands of images.

[TamSV]

Nothing else was plugged in so I'll get hold of a powered USB hub and see how that goes.

Good thinking LPH. I'm going to keep a back-up from now on but I think I'll sort out the best pics and get them hosted online as a back-up back-up. :)

[maviczap]

Plus you can have 5gb stored on Google drive, amongst others