Laptop - recovery of files from hard disk

[nick]

My laptop has died, wont reboot at all and isnt under guarantee. If we cant get it fixed, or its not economical to do so, how easy is it to get the hard disk out and rig it up on another machine somehow? I have a lot of work on there that I dont want to lose.

[JackOfClubs]

It shouldn't be too hard to take out, usually just a few screws on the bottom of the laptop.

You can get a hard drive dock on Tiger Direct or Newegg that will allow you to plug the hard drive into any other computer via USB, which is best if you want to get all the stuff off it. Something like this (clicky) (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3516746&Sku=T925-1219)

[nick]

It shouldn't be too hard to take out, usually just a few screws on the bottom of the laptop.

You can get a hard drive dock on Tiger Direct or Newegg that will allow you to plug the hard drive into any other computer via USB, which is best if you want to get all the stuff off it. Something like this (clicky) (http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3516746&Sku=T925-1219)
Wow thats really cheap, I hoped someone might know of some usb device, i seriously do not want to lose everything on that drive.

[nick]

Managed to get it working again, not quite sure how, but in case it helps anyone in the future this is what I did:-


bought a USB hard disk caddy thing
took the hard drive out of my laptop & put it into the USB caddy
connected this to my old desk top machine
copied the C: and D: partitions from the laptop drive onto my desk top hard drive
put the laptop's hard drive back into the laptop
tried booting it again
this time it automatically ran chkdisk, that hadnt happened before
that ran for ages
once it had done that it rebooted, have rebooted again since & it seems OK

[Kaius]

Nick, do you think its a file on the laptop that stopped it working? Now its been taken off and it works it might be a good idea to sort through and narrow it down.

[nick]

Nick, do you think its a file on the laptop that stopped it working? Now its been taken off and it works it might be a good idea to sort through and narrow it down.
I dont know, the chkdisk did repair a few things so maybe that was it. I'm going to see how it goes and take backups in future.