Data recovery from one broken pc to another.

My PC recently died out. The mother board got fried, and it doesn't even give me a bios screen anymore. How would one pull the info (documents and the such) from the old PC into a new one? (I think this question would go i this section.)

 

I would take the hard drive out of the broken machine, set it as slave (assuming it is IDE), and install it in the new one. Then, you can browse and copy the files from the old hard drive at your leisure.

 

Just a thought...

Once you get the old drive into the working system...I would retrieve everything I could, ASAP!!

The reason I say that...If something that happened in order to fry the motherboard, it could have passed the damage onto the other peripheral devices that were directly connected to the motherboard (i.e. the hard drive, video card, memory, etc.)!! Although something (the hard drive in your case)may appear to be working ok right now...it could start intermittently malfunctioning, and/or just out right die on you, and you'll be screwed if you haven't retireved your info off that drive yet!!

Like I said...just a suggestion!!

Roger

 

Take it from him! He's certified!

 

thank you guy's! I've only got a few items that I need to copy, but I'll look up online to find out how to slave a hard drive and install it, then try it out! Thank you!

 

Slaving a hard drive is nothing really!!

If you look at the rear of the drive, where all the connectors are...you should see a little section of bare pins in between where you connect the power and the ribbon cables. In the section where the pins are, you should see a little pull tab over two of those pins. You want that tab over the two pins designated for the slave or CS (cable select). You will either find a printed diagram on the label on top the drive, or if you turn the drive over...on the circuit board, directly under the pins I was talking about...you will see where the soldered points related to the pins on the back are labeled in fine print.

If you computer is within 3 or 4 years old, you should probably use the CS mode and the system will designate the drives according to where they are on the ribbon cable. You can look at your primary drive and if the jumper is on CS on that drive, then put the slave drive jumper on CS also. If the primary drive is on master (usually designated by MA) then put the second drive as slave (usually designated by SL).

When you hook up the drives to the ribbon cable...you will notice the cable has two connectors on on end (usually somewhere within about 6" of one another...then there is the other connector at the other end all by itself. You want the master drive to be at the end of the two on the one end, and the slave drive on the second connector. The other connector at the other end, by itself, goes to the motherboard. Be careful and look at the connectors first because you will see that there is a key on the side to allow the connector to be turned only one way to be properly inserted, both on the drives and on the motherboard. You will have to exert a SMALL amount of ligh force to get them to slide in, but don't get carried away, because you can bend those pins if you don't have it lined up properly!! It's typically not that big of an issue, but just be careful!!

When you start up the system, it should boot into windows as it normally does, and then you might have to be patient for it to find, read and install that second drive, before you will see it in "My Computer". Once you see it in my computer, you should be able to double click on the new drive and navigate to where your files are and move them to the appropriate place. If you are using Windows XP...just right click on the file you want to retrieve and then send to the CD burner, and once you get all the files you want to the cd burner, then you can use the XP built in burning wizard to burn them to disc. Or if you want...you can make a new folder in your primary drive and then just paste and copy them into C drive.

I didn't know how firmiliar you are with this stuff so I tried to dumb it down as much as possible, so I hope you don't take offense if you already knew some of the stuff I was talking about!!

Let me know if I confused you in any way, or if things aren't going as planned!!

Roger

 

Nice answer roger.

Perhaps one of the mods might consider making that a read only sticky in the hardware forum or faq somewhere. It seems to come up every now and again.

Matt

 

I agree with this completely! Saving work is a GREAT idea. I mean, what is the purpose of writing? To save knowledge and make it easily accessible. When I find good posts on here, I bookmark them so I can re-post them easily. For example, I often post this link, because I feel it is thorough, and simple enough for the complete novice.

 

I do too, except I am not always on the same computer lol. I've hunted through favorites many a time only to realise I added it on the laptop.

Hmm I just had an idea for my next program A favorites syncronizer

Matt

 

it worked! Thank you all so much for the help. Now I can stop using the stupid imac.