[Xales]

Hello all;

My family is in a bit of a bind here. The family desktop computer stopped responding a couple weeks ago. It will turn on, but it will not recognize any type of input from any mouse or any keyboard we have in the house. It just turns on and we're stuck on the select user screen. This is a problem, obviously, but not the problem that's foremost. The real problem is we cannot access the hard drive, which has needed information for taxes and such.

Not being as computer savvy as some people, I can think of only one of two options:
1. Take out the hard drive and put it in the other desktop computer we have which is not connected to the internet.
2. Connect the hard drive to my laptop (What I'm using right now.)

I did a search through the forums and read a bunch of stuff about putting a laptop hard drive into a desktop and such, but nothing about the other way around. I'm sure I can google the mess out of moving the hard drive over to the other desktop and find my answer, but I'm having trouble finding the answer to connecting the desktop hard drive to my laptop. I read a little snippet about making it a 'slave' on my laptop, but didn't understand what it was trying to tell me.

So, the long and short of it is: Can we attach the desktop hard drive to my laptop so we can get the information we need? Or are we better off trying to move the hard drive to the other desktop which is not connected the the internet?

My laptop is a HP Pavilion dv6000 Entertainment PC running windows vista if this helps anything.

Thank you for you time,

Xales

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Yes. You need to buy, so called hard drive enclosure, which will let you put desktop hard drive into it, and connect it to your laptop through USB cable.

[Broni]

Yes. You need to buy, so called hard drive enclosure, which will let you put desktop hard drive into it, and connect it to your laptop through USB cable.

[Xales]

Alright, sounds simple enough. Too simple in fact, I doubt I trust myself to do it alone, lol.

I was talking to a friend and he said something about it not working if the two computers had different OSes. The hard drive we need has windows XP on it, while my laptop has Vista. My grandmother does have a laptop with windows XP and the other desktop also has XP.

Would there be problems if we hooked the xp hard drive to my vista laptop, or should we connect it to my grandmother's XP laptop/ the other XP desktop.

I personally didn't think there would be an issue, but, like I said, I'm not all that computer savvy.

Thank you for the help Broni,

[Broni]

Windows version doesn't matter.
...and don't be shy, you can do it.
Once you go to the store, and see the thing, you'll know, it's simple.
Couple of screws to open the enclosure, put the hard drive in, connect two cables, close the box, USB cable to your computer, power cable to the power source, and you're done. 5 minutes.