I have just purchased a laptop hard drive enclosure for my old laptop’s hard drive. It seems to work well however I can’t find some documents. Is it possible to see files that were on the desktop of my old laptop?

If you can see all other files, most likely your desktop documents are still on the hard drive. You just have to search in the right location.

Here’s how you can navigate to the desktop documents:

Windows XP
X:\Documents and Settings\User_Name\Desktop

Windows Vista
X:\Users\User_Name\Desktop

Windows 7
X:\Users\User_Name\Desktop

Where X:\ is your laptop hard drive in the enclosure  and User_Name is your login name.

What is a VGA port and where is it because I dropped my laptop and the screen is broken and I would love to get my pictures on my home computer.

The VGA port looks like one shown on the picture below. It’s a D-shaped connector with 15 holes.

If the laptop screen is broken, you use the VGA port to connect an external monitor. In some cases you’ll have to force the laptop to switch from the internal screen to the external monitor using a keyboard shortcut. For example, on Toshiba laptop you’ll have to hold down the Fn key and at the same time press on a F5 key until video appears on the external monitor. Different laptop brands have different keyboard shortcuts.

Alternatively, you can remove the hard drive from the laptop and install it into an external USB enclosure. After that you connect this enclosure to the home computer, access the hard drive and get all your pictures. This post explains how to retrieve files from a laptop with damaged screen.

I have files I need to access on my SATA hard drive. I have pulled this out of the laptop, placed in external USB enclosure but there are files in specific user folders that seem to be blocked. I know my passwords ect… but how do you enter these when you can only view hard drive as an external drive?

Most likely you’ll have to take ownership over folders and files located on the external hard drive. I explained how to take ownership and access files in this post.

If your hard drive has crashed and you’re unable to boot into the system to retrieve your files, you’ll have to take a different, more involved approach. This tutorial will show you how to recover files off of a crashed hard drive.

These instructions assume that the hard drive is crashed but not physically damaged. You can use these instruction with both Mac OS X and Windows. You will need a second computer with Internet access and a DVD burner, a blank CD, and the crashed system should have an optical drive.

Step 1

Download a Linux distro that offers a LiveCD, or that can be run from a CD or pen drive. Small-file size options are Puppy Linux and Damn Small Linux. However, I recommend downloading Ubuntu, simply because mounting a drive is effortless with it and does not require the Terminal.

Step 2

Burn the downloaded ISO file to a blank CD using Nero or any other burning software.

Step 3

Insert the CD into your crashed system and restart the computer. At BIOS, enter setup by pressing the designated key for your system – for most computers, it’s F12 or ESC.

Once in BIOS, select Boot Sequence and highlight CD/DVD Drive. Press the ‘U’ button to move the option above the internal hard drive, then save and exit BIOS.

The computer will restart and the Ubuntu logo will be displayed along with a menu of options. Choose ‘Try Ubuntu….’ This will start Ubuntu, running it from your CD drive. Don’t worry, it won’t affect your hard drive in any way.

Step 4

After Ubuntu has loaded, look in the upper left corner. Choose Places. Towards the bottom of the menu, you will see a picture of a hard drive – it will say something like ’0.0GB Drive’, displaying the capacity of your internal hard drive. Click to mount.

Step 5

Plug in your external hard drive or flash drive. Navigate to Places and choose the new drive you just plugged in to mount it.

Step 6

The internal hard drive and external media are now mounted. Look on the desktop for the hard drives. Click them to open.

In the windows that appear, you can choose Documents and Settings and copy the data files to your external drive, or you can simply copy the entire internal drive to the external drive and sort it out later.

Step 7

Once finished, shut the machine down and remove the CD when instructed. You can now reload your system as normal.

My laptop hard disk crashed along with optical drive. I have got the new parts in place now. I am connecting my old hard disk in an USB enclosure to the laptop. I cannot see the drive in My computer though it shows up in disk management as healthy. It is FAT 32.
Please help me to recover the data. Do I need any recovery software?

If the old drive appears in the disk management but not in My Computer, apparently the file structure on the hard drive is corrupted. In this case you’ll have to use data recovery software. It’s still possible to get personal files with the data recovery software even though the hard drive will not appear in My Computer.

Also, you can try this method but it’ll take some time. It’s free. Download a copy of Knoppix – live Linux and burn it on a CD. Boot your desktop (with the laptop hard drive attached to it) from this CD. The desktop will boot to a Windows-like environment and you should see the laptop hard drive icon along with the desktop hard drive icon on the desktop. Click on the laptop hard drive and find if you can see any data this way. Sometimes Linux can see what Windows cannot see. You can burn it on a CD or DVD if your desktop has two optical drives. Knoppix comes with CD/DVD burning software. Alternatively, you can transfer data to an external flash drive/hard drive formatted with FAT or FAT32 (not NTFS). You’ll have to enable writing to the flash drive/hard drive through the drive property settings.

My laptop OS crashed suddenly. I have some documents that i need to transfer real urgently, so i connected the laptop hard drive to an external case and tried copying it to my desktop. But it says access denied cause my documents ere password protected on my laptop …
Is there any any to go around this?

You should be work around this problem if you take ownership over files as it described in this article on the Microsoft site.
Let’s say you want to take ownership over “My Documents” folder located on your laptop hard drive.

You can do it in the following order:
1. Connect the laptop hard drive to another working PC using external USB enclosure. You have to be logged in to your PC as a user with admin privileges.
2. Access the laptop hard drive through “My Computer” and navigate to the folder you want to copy to the desktop PC, probably it’s “My Documents” folder.
3. Take ownership over “My Documents” folder and all files and folder inside.
Right click on the folder >> Click on Properties >> Click on Security Tab >> Click on Advanced Button >> Clock on Owner Tab >> Highlight Administrator >> Check Replace owner on subcontainers and objects box >> Clock OK and wait until it’s done.
Now you should be able to access and transfer your files.

Recently dropped my Dell inspiron 1150 laptop and now when i turn it on all i can see is 10% of the screen on top left h.side….good news is i didn’t damage my files but how do i go about retrieving files if i cannot see what i am doing and what steps do i need to take to attach to another computer monitor? knowing i don’t know much about tech stuff.

Connect an external monitor (LCD or CRT) to the laptop using the VGA port (D-shaped connector with 15 holes) and restart the laptop. Most likely the laptop will detect the external monitor automatically and you’ll get external video. Now you can retrieve/backup files.
If the external monitor has no video, hold down the Fn key and at the same time press F8 (CRT/LCD). It should switch video from the internal LCD to the external screen.
Alternatively, you can remove the hard drive from the laptop and install it into an external USB enclosure. Then connect this enclosure to any other working computer via a USB port. If there is nothing wrong with the hard drive, it should be detected automatically and it will pop up in My Computer. Access the hard drive and retrieve files.

Yesterday my laptop failed to boot. Everything appears to be normal but each time I turn it on it hangs on Windows screen with a running bar. I cannot boot my laptop to the desktop. I tested the hard drive and it passed the test. I think that my hard drive is fine and the operating system is corrupted. I have very important files in my documents and I need to recover, transfer them to the desktop computer as soon as possible. How can I connect the laptop hard drive to a desktop computer?

It is nice that your hard drive passed the test. I think you have very good chances that your data is still good and you would be able to transfer it to the desktop computer. Here are some tips for connecting a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer:
1. You can use 2.5” hard drive adapter and connect the laptop hard drive directly to a desktop computer through the IDE connector on the system board. The desktop hard drive would be connected to IDE1 so you can connect the laptop hard drive to IDE2. After you boot the desktop computer the second hard drive would be detected and you can access it as a regular HDD. Now you can recover, transfer all needed files from the laptop hard drive to the desktop hard drive. Here are detailed instructions with pictures.
2. You can use an external USB enclosure for laptop hard drives. I think that would be the easiest and fastest way to access your data. You can find an external USB enclosure in any computer shop and it would cost you about $20-$30 or buy it here for $10. After you remove the laptop hard drive, place it inside the enclosure and connect to the desktop or another laptop computer via the USB cable. It is not necessary to install any drivers for the enclosure if the desktop PC runs Winodws 2000 or Windows XP. If the desktop PC runs Windows 98, then most likely you’ll have to install a driver for the enclosure before you can access the hard drive. The USB cable and the driver usually supplies with the external enclosure. Now you can access the laptop hard drive as a regular drive on your desktop/laptop computer.