computer help

[Welsh Raider]

Basically my problem is that I have an old hp laptop. Bought it 2004, and it hasn't worked since 07. It won't turn on at all, it was due to something wrong with the power supply.

Anyway on the laptop I have a lot of my teaching planning from when I was a student, that I wouldn't mind getting. Plus there is a load of music I wouldn't mind aswell.

Basically what I want to know is the any way I can get the stuff off the hard drive, anything I can buy, plug into anything.

And if there is, can you explain it in moron terms as I'm rubbish with computers

[Gazzara]

There is a way and there is a way   Too drunk to go through everything but if you give me a day or so I will give you all the details.

[Welsh Raider]

Someone was telling me about a hard drive caddy or something, which you can connect to a new pc through a usb.

Is this the way you were thinking?

[Gazzara]

Basically, yes.  You can extract the old hard drive and use it as an extra drive to extract the information you need.  The problem with this is that it has the OS on as well and if done incorrectly will lose some of the data or you will only be able to extract part of the data.

If you are only wanting to do this the once then it maybe more cost effective to take it to a computer shop for them to extract (they should all offer this service) which will probably cost you around £15 - £20.  That way you have peace of mind that they are doing it correctly and you will not have to worry about losing necessary data.

[Welsh Raider]

I think I might have a look on e-bay and see how much I can get one of those caddies for. That way atleast I can get everything off it that I need. Cos I'm sure there'll be things on it that I forgot about.

Even if it doesn't work properly its better than nothing because its been sat in the waredrobe for 3 years, so haven't got nuch to lose



When you say OS what do you mean. Operating systen? What problems can this cause.

[Gazzara]

Yes, OS = operating system.  The OS is partitioned on the hard drive away from your data.  When you plug a hard drive in to setup it up as an additional one the computer will read the OS first, realise the OS is there and offer to re-format the HD completely.

You will need to do a work around of the OS itself without having to re-format it.  This can sometimes cause loss of data if done incorrectly.

[Welsh Raider]

Bought myself a Caddie and get it all setup, and the computer has found it etc etc.

Now I have a small problem. When I go to Documents and settings, I can find/read everything saved in the "all users" folder, I did however occassionally share the computer, so had a different user account "Jamie Jones" and this had a password on it, everything seems to have saved into there, and that account "is not accessible" and "access denied"

Is there a way around this, I know the password to get in if possilbe, but there doesnt seem to be anywhere to enter this.

The Device come up as Local Disk (E:) My friend reckons as you stated its coming up as another OS and not a removable storage device which is causing the probems.