How to copy data from hard drive

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RisseN

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Hey everyone,

A few days ago my desktop power supply blew and resulted in one of my hard drives frying. Luckily I have 2 seperate HDD's, one with the OS and applications, the other one for storage. It was the OS HDD that got fried.

Anyway, i've now got a new HDD but it's a 500gig which is bigger than my current storage HDD. So what I want to do is copy all my storage stuff off of my old HDD and onto the new one. Then I want to install windows etc on the old HDD. The problem im having is trying to figure out a reasonably quick way to do this. So far my only plan is to install windows on the new HDD so that I can see and work with my old storage HDD. Then ill copy over everything from storage onto my laptop. Then ill reformat my desktop hard drives and setup the new storage and OS stuff. Then copy everything back over from my laptop. Mission!!

So what im wondering is, is there anyway I can copy my stuff off of the old desktop HDD straight onto my laptop? It's a SATA 1 HDD but im wondering if there's some kind of special cable I can buy so I can plug it straight into my laptop. That way I can skip the whole part of having to install windows in the new HDD, only to copy my storage stuff off of the old one, and then reformat everything again anyway.

Thanks for any advice.
 
You can buy an external enclosure for any HDD. They usually plug into the USB port. They will give you instructions in case you need to change the settings (jumpers) to make it a slave or master (I forget which). That way you will be able to read from it if it's functioning.
 
Just get an external HDD enclosure.

Also, be sure to install and update an antivirus on your windows first BEFORE copying the data off ;)
 
Dont forget that installing Windows on a HDD and then plugging it in to another PC to use as the OS is NOT guaranteed to work. There are some short-cuts for this, so check out the Microsoft site.
 
install OS on old data hdd (without formatting the hdd) copy data from that drive to new disk. when done format old data hdd and install your os
 
Simple & free option.

Plug the new HD in and use a Linux LiveCD to copy the data from your old storage drive to the new one. A linux LiveCD like Ubuntu can be downloaded for free (cost of badwidth) or you can get a copy from someone else. Magazines like Linux format at R140 also has livecds on the cover, other mags at cna as well.

Ask in the Linux section here for someone close by to burn you a copy.

Amazing how people will recommend spending money when there is a simpler free alternative.
 
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yeah i was gonna say just boot any linux distro with a live cd. Ponder stole the limelight :)
 
Why not use the new drive for OS? It's bound to be faster- more cache etc...

Format into two if you need to.
 
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