So you have an older machine which died. You know you’re not going to have the machine fixed, but there is data you need to save from the now defunct beast. Provided the drive itself is not dead you shouldn’t have a problem getting your old information off. You might need a bit of very inexpensive hardware but it will be a useful addition to any computer tool belt.
Laptop, desktop it really doesn’t matter but a USB Sata / IDE adapter is going to be your best friend. But that is perfectly fine. This one adapter for roughly 20 dollars lets you hook up 95% of the hardrive types that you would find in a personal computer. SATA drives are the newer smaller connectors found on most desktop computers sold within the last 3 years. IDE connectors are the larger connectors favored by laptops and older desktops. Once you hook this adapter up to your computer and to the hardrive the drive appears under My Computer in a PC, or on the Desktop for Macs.
If the drive doesn’t appear in the Finder or in My Computer the drive could be dead or corrupted. If its dead and you don’t have a stockpile of cash you’re pretty much out of luck. Especially if they drive is making rather nasty noises. If you do have a stockpile of money there are data recovery services out there, i wouldn’t feel comfortable recommending any specic one right now, but the price tag can run from 150 dollars quickly up into the thousands depending on how bad the drive is messed up.
If the drive is just corrupted then i am particularly fond of the Get Back Data which is a reasonable investment if you fix machines fairly often. I have yet to find a drive recovery program for free that i like. However many of them will give you a test drive to see how you like it.
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goes without saying that it’s always cheaper, easier and less stressful to have good backups beforehand – then, when the inevitable happens, it’s really no more hassle than the cost of a replacement and the time to restore.
You’re right about that! But try as i might its hard to get anyone to plan ahead. Backup needs to be simple, time machine is a good start but it does nothing for the PC world. When the inevitable happens its nice to be prepared.
We have a similar adapter in my office. Seems a little flaky with SATA though. May have to check out the one you linked to.
Our program of choice for windows HDs is Zero Assumption Recovery (ZAR) http://www.z-a-recovery.com/
It takes forever to analyze drives (60 hours is our current record, 12 hr avg) but has gotten data back from heavily corrupted drives.
We have a relationship with DriveSavers in California. They offer a partnership program that gets academic institutions a % off on recovery jobs (no discount on attempt fees) The program is free to join so even if we don’t need it we don’t lose anything.
DriveSavers has a 80% success rate for things we have sent them (4 out of 5, and that 1 failure was a very special case)
I agree with darkuncle. backups are the cheapest solution. on my Windows boxes I run a scheduled task that robocopys (robocopy: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc733145.aspx) my important folders to a separate hard drive every 24 hours.
On my mac i rely on TimeMachine (and that has saved my butt twice in the last 18 months)