Broken laptop

[vandersam]

I have aproblem. My Dell Inspiron laptop has a broken screen and a faulty power input socket. Also the battery is totally dead so I cannot turn the laptop on or see what is going on even if I could switch it on. I don't really care about the laptop but what I do care about is the large amount of valuable information that's on the hard drive. Is there anyway that I can get the stuff of the hard drive? I am desperate for help with this one so any PC nuts out there PLEASE give me a hand!! Thank you :)

[danchip]

take it to a pc laptop repair person or someone like the tech guys at pc world they could probably retrieve it for you

[vandersam]

thanks mate, I had thought of that but do you have any idea of the what the cost would be for a job like this one? I am willing to pay for what I need but not if it's going to be an excessive amount???

[ChuckFickens]

I would not take it to PC world!

Buy your self a external 2.5inch hard drive caddy for about 15quid, remove the hard drive from the laptop install it in the caddy, plug into another PC and retrieve the data from the drive.

Removing the drive is easy on laptops, if you post the model I will attempt to find instructions, but it will be behind a cover either on the bottom or side that is removable with only one or two screws

The only thing to be aware of is there are two different types of connector on laptop hard drives so you have to make sure you get a caddy to suit the one you have.

They are either SATA
http://www.lapzone.com/catalog/PICT1449.jpg

Or IDE
http://bixnet.net/images/NBHD-IDE-Connector.jp g

at a guess I would Yours will probably be IDE as it doesn't sound like a new laptop

[ChuckFickens]

something like this would be ideal as it's both SATA and IDE

http://www.amazon.co.uk/external-Drive-Enclosu re-Caddy-Silver/dp/B0019D2EOM/ref=sr_1_14?ie=U TF8&s=electronics&qid=1227265592&sr=8-14

IF you do it this way with a caddy then you have the benefit of then having a external hard drive you can reuse at the end of it for transporting data about if needed

[vandersam]

chuckfickens....you sir are a legend that sounds like the answeer I needed. I thnk it will be IDE as it is about 3-4 years old. Nice one mate!!!!!!!

[ChuckFickens]

hopefully this will give you details of how to remove the hard drive, if they don't list your model it should at least give you a idea as to how to go about it.

http://www.cmsproducts.com/notebook_drive_remo val.htm

[vandersam]

many thanks you have been a great help