Recovering data from an IDE drive

[keithdale]

Hello,
A friend died recently and his wife has asked me if I could retrieve some data files from his computer.
However the power supply had failed and seems to have fried the mobo.
My computer only has sata , can I run the HD externally.
Any help from you experts would be appreciated.

 

[Guest]

Get a simple IDE to USB adapter. They're usually cheaper than buying an IDE/USB enclosure.

 

[sminlal]

I assume that the hard drive in the fried system is an IDE drive and that's what the problem is?

Probably the simplest thing to do would be to buy an external disk enclosure that supports IDE drives - you could put the disk into it, hook it up to your computer using USB, and then pull the data off. And then you (or they) could continue to use the drive as an external device if you wanted (great for backups!).

Here's an example of such an enclosure: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145131

 

[keithdale]

Hi sminlal,

Yes it is an IDE drive, it presumably has an operating system on it. Would this pose a problem?.

I am fairly computer literate but have never come across this problem before.

Thanks for your reply.

Keith.

 

[sminlal]

The OS shouldn't present a problem. The worst issue you're likely to run into is that any files in personal folders will be protected against access - you can get around that problem by taking ownership of them from an administrative account and then changing their permissions.

 

[daship]

I haven't ever seen a motherboard that doesn't have a ide connection on it. Hook it into yours, I know you have a spot for it, just use his drive and cable, its that simple.

 

[sminlal]

> I haven't ever seen a motherboard that doesn't have a ide connection on it.

You haven't looked very hard - my motherboard doesn't have one.