Hard drives

[jez]

Can anybody offer advice on the subject of what to do with the hard drive from my old desktop, my problem is that last time I tried to boot it up it kept throwing "windows failed to start" errors, it wouldnt boot up, even in safe mode, just repeated the cycle of windows will re start in ..... seconds etc, I turned it off by pressing and holding the power button then tried again, this time no monitor....

All lights are on and fans running but despite swapping graphics cards around etc no monitor, I need some files off the old lass so I thought about sending the drive away for recovery when it occured to me that I might be able to slot it into my new desktop, is this an option, the drive in the new one is SATA and the old drive is IDE, would I need to reformat and thus lose everything anyway.

Should I play it safe and just send it away?

Advice welcome!

 

[vanthus]

Id say the best bet was getting an ide to usb external enclosure then you can connect old drive to new pc.

 

[jez]

Thanks vanthus, that sounds like a great idea, I wasnt aware of them, has anyone experience with using them, I assume they work as they are supposed to?

 

[vanthus]

Thanks vanthus, that sounds like a great idea, I wasnt aware of them, has anyone experience with using them, I assume they work as they are supposed to?

I've use them to to recover files from laptop hard drives & they worked a treat,In your case you could recover your files then format hard drive & use it as storage,or if it.s just to recover some files maybe you could borrow one.Just make sure you get the right one,in your case i think it would be a 3.5 ide to usb,some have fans & prices vary quite a lot,check some reviews on them.