Guy Smashed My Laptop, What Do I Need To Do Save My Hard Drive?

[Funklink]

The Details:

My Laptop is a Dell Inspiron 1750 and the hard drive is a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 (500 GB); while I can no longer turn on my computer I would like to get the data off my hard drive. I've already removed it and was wondering how I should store it, as well as a method I could use to get my data back. I used to have a cable to plug a similar hard drive into my USB port, it that an option? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated, thanks so much guys.

Oh, and sorry if this is in the wrong place.

[layers]

How did the guy smash your laptop?

anyways, there are kits to connect your SATA drive to a usb (yes, it needs its own power source). Kind of like this http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...49952&csid=_61
where do you live, I can give you mine if you're close?

[QIII]

Moved to General Help.


Hello!

If it's a SATA drive, the connections on the back will be exactly the same as the SATA power and data connections on any other drive. I just recovered data from my son's laptop (it died a natural death) so we could get it on his new one. All I did was pop it in my case, which has mounts for those drives. That would save having to buy anything new.

The unknown factor may be the amount of acceleration the disk was subject to in the smashing process. Drives will only withstand a certain amount of shock without being completely wrecked. Even if not destroyed, the heads can bounce off of and scratch the platters.

If your data is on an NTFS partition, any computer will do. If on an ext partition, use a Linux machine.

Best wishes!

[Funklink]

He was really angry. Anyway, it's quite alright no need to worry about lending the cable since I don't live near. Do you know if that cable would work for this specific hard drive?

Edit: Right, I figured I'd just pick up a cable like the one layers linked and I'd plug it into my desktop to get my data back (or see if there's some data to even safe).

[coldraven]

You can get an enclosure on ebay for $5, search for "2.5 sata enclosure"
I bought one, it is powered by USB (two plugs) and works fine.
Always plug the cable into the USB sockets before plugging the drive in on the other end of the cable.
This way you will not exceed the power limits from the USB ports.

[Funklink]

Thanks a lot guys!

[Funklink]

I got an external case for a sata drive and hooked everything up. The computer detects a device as malfunctioning and no drive letter pops up. It would seem my drive's defective and I will have to get data recovery somewhere (if that's even possible). The files were very important and I don't have any copies.

[MoebusNet]

They have commercial companies that do forensic data recovery for a fee. This is one I found that offers a "no data, no fee" approach:

http://www.fields-data-recovery.com/...FZE-MgodQBQAvg

I'm sure there are plenty of others, just takes $'s.