[RB45]

I just had a very unexpected flood in my basement. My Dell desktop got water up to 2 inches of the MB including the sound card. The computer was on at the time. The hard drive and backup slave were not close to the water. It makes no sense to try to fix the damage but I do need the data on the hard drive and put it on a new computer (laptop probably). I do have a 3yr old laptop that I'm using now.
1) Can I use this laptop to verify that the desktop hard drives are ok?
2) How can I retrieve the data from the hard drives? Can I move data to external hard drive?

Thanks for any help you may provide.

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I just had a very unexpected flood in my basement. My Dell desktop got water up to 2 inches of the MB including the sound card. The computer was on at the time. The hard drive and backup slave were not close to the water. It makes no sense to try to fix the damage but I do need the data on the hard drive and put it on a new computer (laptop probably). I do have a 3yr old laptop that I'm using now.
1) Can I use this laptop to verify that the desktop hard drives are ok?
2) How can I retrieve the data from the hard drives? Can I move data to external hard drive?

Thanks for any help you may provide.

You can TURN the HD into an external drive by purchasing a 3.5" external USB enclosure. It will allow you to plug the drive in and make sure it is still working and if it is, then you can simply copy it over and treat the drive as an external backup drive. You just need to know if the drive is IDE or SATA (ide has a bunch of parallel pins on the back of it, SATA has a small <1" wide blade that a small thin cable attaches to.

I am guessing you didn't have a back up, I will forewarn you, if the drive doesn't work, expect to pay upwards of $500-$2000 for a professional recovery group to retrieve your data.

If you ARE able to retrieve your data, I hope that you have learned the value of backups (especially ones that are not in the same location as the computer). So my advice to you, is what I have my fathers dental office doing. They backup their server to a USB drivethat goes in a fire-proof safe and on top of that they backup to an online backup company. This way, if the HD in the computer dies, we still have everything on site to get it going but if the building catches fire. We have an offsite back to use to get back started again (albeit it will take a long while to restore the backup).

[PedroDaGR8]

I just had a very unexpected flood in my basement. My Dell desktop got water up to 2 inches of the MB including the sound card. The computer was on at the time. The hard drive and backup slave were not close to the water. It makes no sense to try to fix the damage but I do need the data on the hard drive and put it on a new computer (laptop probably). I do have a 3yr old laptop that I'm using now.
1) Can I use this laptop to verify that the desktop hard drives are ok?
2) How can I retrieve the data from the hard drives? Can I move data to external hard drive?

Thanks for any help you may provide.

You can TURN the HD into an external drive by purchasing a 3.5" external USB enclosure. It will allow you to plug the drive in and make sure it is still working and if it is, then you can simply copy it over and treat the drive as an external backup drive. You just need to know if the drive is IDE or SATA (ide has a bunch of parallel pins on the back of it, SATA has a small <1" wide blade that a small thin cable attaches to.

I am guessing you didn't have a back up, I will forewarn you, if the drive doesn't work, expect to pay upwards of $500-$2000 for a professional recovery group to retrieve your data.

If you ARE able to retrieve your data, I hope that you have learned the value of backups (especially ones that are not in the same location as the computer). So my advice to you, is what I have my fathers dental office doing. They backup their server to a USB drivethat goes in a fire-proof safe and on top of that they backup to an online backup company. This way, if the HD in the computer dies, we still have everything on site to get it going but if the building catches fire. We have an offsite back to use to get back started again (albeit it will take a long while to restore the backup).

[RB45]

Thanks for getting back.

It looks like I have IDEs. I will hunt for the 3.5" external USB enclosure. I hope using it is as easy as you indicate.

You're right about backing up. I will take your advice.
Thanks again.

[PedroDaGR8]

Thanks for getting back.

It looks like I have IDEs. I will hunt for the 3.5" external USB enclosure. I hope using it is as easy as you indicate.

You're right about backing up. I will take your advice.
Thanks again.

It really is, quite easy. You will open the enclosure, there will be a short data cable and a short power cable that plugs into your drive. You will hook these up and connect the enclosure, via USB cable, to your computer. It will more than likely take some time installing drivers (1-10 minutes maximum) or drivers maybe needed from a CD accompanying your drive (super rare anymore) and then a new drive will show up in My Computer. Thats all there is to it. You can listen to the drive too, to see if it spins up properly etc.

Also, on the backups I wasn't implying you needed to use a fire proof safe. They just have one in the office already so we store it in there at night. I was just saying it is good to have TWO backups. One that is located close in case the drive fails you have a QUICK way to get the computer and data back up and running. The second, is in a separate geographic location just in an act of god type of situation (sort of like a safety deposit box) where your whole house or city is destroyed.

[RB45]

I've been looking on line for an enclosure and yes it seems that it will be pretty straight forward. Without Compusa, it looks like I will need to buy one on line. I may buy 2 and then I will have 2 backups to the new computer.
Thanks again.