Recovering hard drive data

Live at Three

Hi
I have an acer aspire (A) from 2012 that is dying a slow death. It now goes to blue screen after 5 minutes of being switched on. Kernel memory error is one of the messages that comes up, some sort of hardware failure.

The laptop is pretty well used over the last 3 years and I got my 350 euro worth out of it, so I don't know if it's worth the cost of repair but I am wondering what's the easiest way to recover my data?

I have access another almost identical acer aspire (B) that is working fine. Can I simply put the old hard drive A into this and copy the data on to a key or something, then replace hard drive B and continue as normal with Acer B? Would this pose any risk to laptop B? (It's not mine)

Also on an unrelated note, anyone want to buy a broken laptop?

Noxin

Easiest way is probably with an enclosure. You can get them pretty cheap these days.
Take the hard drive out of the busted laptop, uzbe it up and copy your data to the working laptop.

Live at Three

Thanks Noxin for that. I never knew such things existed. Is this the same process that the repair shop wanted to charge me €100 for...'backup service'?

I would be reluctant to spend money on something that I would only use once, I am trying to de-clutter. Is there any way to do it without buying extra gear?

Thanks

Morpork

http://goo.gl/I8zhwN

One of them will do ya. It's cheaper than an enclosure. You can then plug it into any computer via USB and copy the data over.

Noxin

Live at Three wrote: »

Thanks Noxin for that. I never knew such things existed. Is this the same process that the repair shop wanted to charge me €100 for...'backup service'?

I would be reluctant to spend money on something that I would only use once, I am trying to de-clutter. Is there any way to do it without buying extra gear?

Thanks

Pretty sure you could get one in PC World for around a tenner.

Other option would be if you have a working PC available to you. Chances it'll have spare SATA cables inside that you could just plug the hard drive into.
If it doesn't have any spare cables but has a DVD drive, you can just unplug the cables from this and plug them into the hard drive.
Just make sure the PC is off before you do any of this :P

==edit== ^^ yup that thing from Morpork will do the trick just as well. It is the exact same as an enclosure without the plastic covering around the drive. Just the components

Live at Three

Cool, thanks a lot folks