Be Excellent To Each Other

I have an old computer. It is broked. Inside it lurks a hard drive which is, to my knowledge, still operational.

I wish to transfer stuff from that hard drive to my current hard drive.

I figure I'll have to open the case on the old PC and remove the drive, but is tehre any way to transfer the data from that drive to my current PC without opening the case of my current one and faffing around a lot?

Yep, get a USB caddy.

If the old computer is IDE, something like this will do: http://www.amazon.co.uk/DYNAMODE-POWERE ... 522&sr=8-8

Sure is, you need something like this

http://www.amazon.co.uk/SHARKOON-QuickP ... 61&sr=1-22

That will do both Sata and IDE, but you can get cheaper ones that just do one or the other.

No, not if the computer hardware is broken.

The faffing is minimal though, just get a USB interface or caddy, they're really cheap and also useful to have.

Cheers, Beex! I did the last one with the case open and wires trailing everywhere, which I feel was a bit of a health hazard. I was unaware of these caddy things.

Now, how to tell if the hard drive in question is SATA or IDE?

Look at it

IDE has loads of pins and a wide flat cable, Sata has a little connector and a small cable

Marvellous. I shall do that tonight, and then get brownie points from the wife for chucking out the great hulking tower case that has been sitting in the spare room for the last three years.

If it's got a long thin cable attached to it (2x16?), and a 4-pronged power socket, it's IDE. If it's a small connector, with a sort of L-shaped socket, it's SATA.
Did you used to be able to get drives that had SATA data connectors, but the old power connectors, or am I making that up?

You don't neccesarily need to faff much anyway.
Just take the old one out (including whatever cable isn't the power cable), and then open up the side off the current PC, and plug in whatever cable you have to anywhere it will fit - these things are generally only fit in one type of socket only, and stick a power cable in (there may be a 4-pin to SATA adapter in the old case which you may have to use. Then again, there might not be). Boot up (leave the side off, no need to even screw the HD in to the case), copy over what you need, power down, take cables out, put side back on.
Simples!

Be aware that you can get drives that have both IDE and Sata.

Any questions, just pop a pic on here and someone will be able to tell you what you have. If you are likely to do this more than once then I recommend the type of caddy i linked to, but if you are only going to do this once then a cheapy Craster type will be more fiddly but work just as well

I have often found this with Crasters.

And then lose all those by popping off to play Gears 3 all night.

Unlikely... the XBox is in the living room these days. I shall have to wait until the child goes to bed.

I have a magical device that turns your internal HD into an external one, no wires are needed you just plug and play. You want a 3.5 HDD external Box (2.5 is laptop)

I have had this exact model running for 2 years, it has not failed me yet and I've gone a fair few days of forgetting to turn it off overnight (it's universal).
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Value-Combo-Dri ... 17&sr=1-48

You might have trouble depending on how the drive is formatted, though.

Why?

Directed at me? My HDD has vista, my PC is windows 7 and it just recognises it as an external drive - unless I were to deliberately boot from it and then the OS goes all vista.

I had it in my head that an NTFS formatted drive will only work in the computer that formatted it, but this appears to be wrong.

I don't know why I thought that.

Nah, my 'why' was aimed at Grim... saying things might not work, but he has since revealed he is but a buffoon, so all is well.

Totally wrong. You will have to take ownership of the data before it'll let you give yourself rights over it, mind.

Yeah.

Maybe I had an encrypted one once, or something.

Also, once the hdd is out it's safe to flog on ebay, even as 'broken', you might get £20-30. Always better than lobbing it in the bin.

Even better - freecycle. No waiting for the auction to finish, answering questions from idiots and arranging for a courier to send it.

You make less money when you give stuff away for free. Selling on eBay is a massive faff thesedays though.

Yes sell it to me for £20 and I'll stick it in a £15 case and enjoy going through your entire HDD. Hope you have some good music and/or someone wrote CC numbers down on a .txt so they "don't forget it"

Are you Sony in disguise?

I mostly want to see if I scanned in old pictures of Bobby on it.

Plus some music I have lost.

Once utilised fully I will attack it with magnets and hammers.

Pertinent part of original quote highlighted for you. I wasn't suggesting flogging the hdd, but the rest of the box without it.

Ah, I see.

Nah, too much effort and it's not in great nick.

Once the HDD is out, it's safe to flog on ebay.


Right back at ya' Banjo.

I believe thats what they call a dangling participle. oops.

You're a danging participlehead.

Dangling pronoun, I believe.

Yeah, well, you're a.... you're a.... shut up.