How to get files off my old hard drives?

3 Answers

1. 
   

   
   

   mike H on Mar 09, 2011

   purchase an external usb hard drive caddy, if you pc is old you will probably need one compatible with an IDE hard drive – remove the drive from the computer put it into the caddy plug it into a usb port on your working computer and thats all you need to do and it will be recognised as another drive letter, plus you also now have a backup drive as well

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   David on Mar 09, 2011

   It depends on how old is old.

   My sister bought a USB device for her old notebook hard drive and is using it today. As long as it uses an interface that is compatible(ATA most likely) then yes, you can buy a box that you plug the hard drive into and make it a USB drive.

   With the older drives(MFM,RLL) you’re probably out of luck.

   David

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3. 
   

   
   

   Jim on Mar 09, 2011

   Yep, there sure is.

   I bet your old drives are IDE hard disks. So assuming they are then:

   Go out and buy an IDE to USB converter box. They cost as little as $20. This will convert your IDE drive to a USB connection. The box contains a small pcb board with the converter hardware. Make sure you pull the jumper from the drive as USB converted drives do not use jumpers. Once the hard disk is in the USB box, you essentially have an external USB hard disk. Then, just plug it into any more modern USB connection on a newer computer, and voila! You can get your files. All you have to do then, is swap out one hard disk for the next one and get the files off the other drive. You might want to keep one of them as an external drive even.

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