Data recovery from laptop harddrive.

[Drogos]

A friend at work wants me to try to recover some data from a laptop with a broken screen and windows isn't booting.
What i want to know is whats the easiest way to do this.
i think i read some were that you can use a linux cd to recover stuff from a pc i do have a 1 therabite external drive will that be good to use if so what linux OS should i use?
I don't know the model of the laptop ill be picking it up tomorrow and post the specs of it.

thank you for your time.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Take the hard drive out of the laptop. Get an external enclosure that accepts 2.5". Put it into your system and transfer away.

 

[Drogos]

k thank you. I just ordered one tru newegg with free shipping got to love newegg.
I'll report back if i get any issues after i get the enclosure.
thanks again.

 

[patonb]

Actually, your idea is the best, Run an Ubuntu liveCD, Ubuntu has the best hardware recognition as far as i can tell, then just copy/paste the stuff you need.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

If the screen is broken, you can try an Ubuntu CD and an external monitor. Plug in a working monitor, boot up the Ubuntu CD, and press whatever key combination switches to the external monitor (usually a Fn+F# control). From there you can boot up to the Ubuntu desktop and connect your external HDD. Then go to Places and open both hard drives and you can copy between them.

Alternatively, you can remove the drive from the laptop and use an enclosure for laptop size HDD's (if it has L-shaped plastic connectors it's SATA, if it has 2 rows of metal pins it's IDE, get the right enclosure). Another option (especially if it's SATA) is to just stick it in a desktop. The desktop and laptop SATA (both power and data) connectors are exactly the same, so you can just plug the drive into your desktop's power supply and SATA to your motherboard and use that. If it's a laptop IDE drive the connector is incompatible but there are adapters (like $5) that adapt a desktop IDE and molex power connector to the smaller connector on laptop IDE drives.

 

[Drogos]

Thank you all for the info. i used the enclosure method since i had already ordered and is good to have it just in case. Never know wen ill com in handy again after all it was cheap $12 with free shipping . I'm glad to hear that the first thing that came to my mind was a good way to go looks im not as clueless as i believe myself to be at times lol. I'm a true amateur i have no schooling in computers. I'm mostly self thought and of course the people in this site are my teachers as well.
thank you all for your time