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Method 1
- Purchase a "Laptop Hard Drive Adaptor Kit" to allow you to plug your laptop hard drive into a standard PC (2.5 TO 3.5 inch IDE HDD).
- Find a functioning standard PC that can read the file system that was on the laptop. One would need Windows 2k/XP or a Linux distribution to read an NTFS/FAT file system, whereas only a Linux distribution can read the EXT3 file system.
- Open up the case and add the laptop drive with adaptor kit as a secondary HDD. Be sure that you have set this drive to either Cable Select, or Slave, depending on the configuration of the system, and the available IDE ports.
- Copy the data you need from the laptop drive to the main drive of the PC, or consider using removable storage for small files.
Method 2
- Purchase or cannibalize a 2.5" USB 2.0 or Firewire drive enclosure.
- Find a functioning standard PC with an open USB port (or firewire port, as applicable) that can read the file system that was on the laptop. One would need Windows 2k/XP or a Linux distribution to read an NTFS/FAT file system, whereas only a Linux distribution can read the EXT3 file system.
- Plug it in, wait for the tones (and/or mount it if that is necessary in this system)
- Copy the data you need from the laptop drive to the main drive of the PC, or consider using removable storage for small files.
Tips
- You can find the adaptor kits on eBay by searching the terms in quotes in step 1. They cost less than $10 with shipping.
- You may also put the laptop drive with adaptor kit into an external drive enclosure if you have one.
- You may need to adjust the primary/slave jumper settings on the hard disks (both laptop and PC).
- When you are finished, the laptop drive can be secured in the PC case and left as a secondary disk on the PC, if you don't need it for anything else.
Warnings
- Don't despair if you are not able to read the contents of the drive. Check your connections, be sure that the drive was detected in BIOS, and try again.
- In Linux, be sure to mount the file system as read-only before attempting. NTFS file systems can only be opened by default in read-only mode, without additional packages.
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