Some of us have an old hard drive and want to get some information from it. But we don’t know how to get data off an old hard drive easily in Windows 10/8/7. This post is to show some useful methods to retrieve data in three different cases.
1. How to Pull Data from Hard Drive Without Connecting it to PC
Sometimes we throw away our broken PC and only keep the old hard drive. In this case, how can we easily get data off an old hard drive? Generally speaking, it is quite easy to connect the old hard drive to our computer.
To do this work, we can use a special USB adapter cable, mount the HDD into an external enclosure or use a USB docking station for disk drives. This depends on our actual situation.
After connecting the old hard drive to our PC, we can go to Windows Explorer, find and open the disk partitions. Then, we can get files from the old disk and put them to another PC. Additionally, it is available to connect the disk to the PC every time we need to access files, rather than copy & paste.
2. How to Get Data off an Old Hard Drive in PC That Cannot Boot
In addition to the above case, we may have another situation: the old hard drive is in our old computer but the computer gets damaged and couldn’t boot. What should we do to recover data from old hard drive? So easy!
Data Recovery
Data recovery is very important in this case. To do this work, we need a piece of professional data recovery software that is compatible with Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 operating systems, etc.
When searching for such a recovery program on the Internet, we can find many users recommend us to use MiniTool Power Data Recovery since it has powerful features to retrieve files under various situations, for example, formatted/RAW/damaged hard drive, lost partition, accidentally file deletion and so forth.
To get data off an old hard drive, it can also be our good assistant, which is proved to excellent. When the PC couldn’t boot, we can use MiniTool Bootable Media Builder to create a bootable disc and set the BIOS to boot the PC from it for data recovery.
Back up Files
Besides data recovery, we can also choose another software developed by MiniTool Software Ltd. to back up our important files when the PC fails to boot from the old hard drive. MiniTool ShadowMaker, a free backup software, is helpful to back up files & folders, disks, partitions, and Windows operating system.
How to get info off a hard drive when the PC is unbootable? Similarly, this program also offers a feature called Medial Builder to create a bootable drive to boot the PC. And then, we can easily get files from an old hard drive and put it to another drive.
3. How to Get Data off an Old Hard Drive to New PC’s Disk
Sometimes we want to use the same Windows settings, apps, personal files and more on our new PC’s disk, but don’t want to reinstall the operating system. In this case, we can choose to clone the old hard drive to the new hard drive. To do this work, MiniTool ShadowMaker can still be helpful because of its Clone Disk feature.
To get more information on getting data from old disk, we find an article – How to Get Data off an Old Hard Drive? The Methods Are Here showing detailed steps in these three cases.
Conclusion
It is really easy to get data off an old hard drive. In this post, three situations are introduced. Just follow each method based on actual needs and we can pull data from the old hard drive, without bringing any damage to original data.
Salman is a prolific environmental writer, and has authored more than 500 articles in reputed journals, magazines and websites. He is proactively engaged in creating mass awareness on renewable energy, waste management, sustainability and conservation all over the world.
Salman can be reached on salman@cleantechloops.com
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