Laptop dead, but want Hard Drive contents

Bebo stunnah

Not sure where to begin, but might aswell ask if anyone could be of assistance. A few months back my Laptop, Sony Vaio VGN-CR11Z/R, completely died on me (after having it for 4 years). For about a year it was surviving off the mains charger as the battery was f*#ked, the battery will only hold out maybe 3/4 minutes max without the cable, possibly from being left plugged in overnight on more than one occasion. But then my charger went and calved on me... So i went on the hunt for a new charger + battery, and ended up jusdt buying a multi purpose charger from PC World.

Lo and behold, about a month after buying it, The laptop starts dying, while plugged in. Tried the sisters cable (another multi connection) and that works grand for a week, then same thing.

But anyways the question I was wondering was this; The laptop wont turn on now, but there's stuff on the hard drive I'd like to have. pictures, old college work, is there any way I could go about doing that?

chin_grin

You can pick up an external 2.5 inch caddy. You just take the hard drive out of the laptop plug it in to this and you can plug it in to another pc via usb.

Like this.

dilallio

Yes.
All you need to do is to unscrew the cover for the hard drive, remove the hard drive and use a USB to SATA/IDE adapter which will allow you to plug the drive into another pc and read it as an external drive.

There's another thread here on where to get these adapters:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056513619

Kash

Try doing a static discharge first and foremost and it might boot for you.

(Disconnect the battery and all cables, and hold down the power button for 20 seconds, then plug it back in and try switching it on)

If it does boot, copy everything to an external drive.

If it doesn't then the only way to get stuff off the HD is to either remove it yourself and put it into an external case, or give it to a tech savvy friend to do the same. Sony laptops are often quite intricate in the build (especially the little ones) but if the machine is already dead, how much damage can you do!

Lots of shops offer the service, but they are usually way overpriced.

yoyo

If its a SATA hard disk just mount it in a different computer (Desktop), if you don't have access to a computer (Desktop with SATA ports free) you'll need to get a caddy. With some Vaios getting to the hard disk can be a bit awkward, it may be located under the keyboard, palm rest etc, just take care taking the machine apart so as to avoid damaging the hard drive

Nick

toco123

You can buy SATA/IDE to USB cables on Amazon to resolve this issue.

Ludo

I got an external SATA HD enclosure for this exact reason in PC world for 6 euro last week. Did the job fine. Pretty cheap also at 6 euro...was expecting to have to buy it online as I thought it would be more in the shop.

Speedsie

When you get your hard-drive sorted, initiate a backup schedule regularly to prevent data loss in the future.

I use www.crashplan.com to back my laptop to my brother's PC and his PC to my laptop. Both are also backed up to an external hard-drive. When my laptop was stolen over a year ago, I was able to restore all my files to my replacement laptop.

And, if you are worried about a laptop being taken, I also use www.truecrypt.org to encrypt a laptop in addition to a username & password.

There are other products, but I like both of these for their ease of use & they are free!

Speeds