“Trying to download info from the harddrive of an old laptop. Was told at BestBuy that I would have to boot the drive in order to see the files. Only 1 answer on here mentioned booting the drive. Is it necessary to boot the drive to copy files?”
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I have had several computers that stopped booting up. At times, I just wanted to upgrade an old computer but keep the files from the hard drive. In either case, it is a fairly simple procedure to retrieve your files. First, you will need to know how to remove the hard drive from the existing computer. You will need to purchase a HDD docking station. ( Note: you will need to verify what type of hard drive connection you are retrieving the files from, i.e SATA or IDE) You must purchase the correct docking station or the pin connectors will not fit. You will also need a computer to download your files to. Once the old hard drive is in the docking station, the docking station will power and connect to your new computer via USB port. There should be directions with the docking station to help you. Your old hard drive is now acting like an external drive and if everything is configured correctly, it will open on the receiving computer as a drive, i.e. f drive, g drive, Note: you will only be able to open certain files but not the programs running them. You can then move the old files to the new computer. ** I am giving one solution that has worked for me. I realize that there may be other solutions and more specific info so maybe someone else can fill in anything I may have missed. Hope this helps!
I would recommend:
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.I have this docking station. All I had to do was insert the drive I needed to move files from. I used it on three different drives and it worked fine each time.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.If you are trying to just get data files it should be fine. I have used this to get info/data from older hard drives.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.This is only true if the drive is encrypted. If the drive is not encrypted, you can just plunk it in this docking station to access it. You may need to take permissions for the folders tho. See: https://www.windowscentral.com/how-take-ownership-files-and-folders-windows-10
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.Whatever harddrive you're putting into the bay has to be formatted and mounted before you copy files to it. You don't have to boot from the harddrive you're trying to copy to and you could even boot from a cd if it supports the bay and filesystems of both the source and destination drive.
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