So my laptop's motherboard broke and unfortunately the only way to fix it at Best Buy is if I pay 700-800 dollars which is just not going to happen. In fact, I don't even need the actual laptop anymore; I just need one very important document from the HDD. (Which I'm sure still functions fine). I trawled around the internet for guides on getting data from a working HDD written in "English" but the only thing I could find was a reference to something called a "hard drive caddy." I can't seem to find much about this "caddy" except that it holds the HDD in place, and I couldn't find any mention of if I could connect it to another working computer via USB. Can these caddies be purchased at a local Best Buy? Because this is the first time I've ever heard of one. And is there any other way to get this one document from the HDD? It is very important to me... Thanks, ~Greg
Welcome to HWF You could buy an external hard disk enclosure (only the enclosure) at a local computer store. Then you just need to put the hard disk into the enclosure, and you can connect it to another computer through USB. And when you've retrieved your files, you can use it as an external drive.
Hey, Thanks for the reply. I have found some hard disk enclosures on the internet (the ones on the Best Buy website were few, expensive, and lowly-rated). Apparently there are two main types of hard disks, SATA and ATA. I am quite sure mine is ATA (according to this website: (HP Pavilion Tx1215nr : Read reviews and compare prices at Ciao). But I'm not sure which type of HDD the Ultra USB supports (Ultra USB 2.0 2.5-inch Hard Disk Drive Enclosure Storage enclosure- IDE). In fact almost none of the enclosures mention which type of HDD they support. Another problem is the OS. Not all enclosures list Windows Vista as a "required OS" so I'm not sure if those will be able to read from the HDD? ~Greg
All laptop hard disks are 2.5", so they are compatible with all enclosures. You can use the drive on Windows 2000 and higher without needing to install software drivers.
