If you are recovering the laptop data onto a desktop harddrive you would have a configuration similar to this.

Laptop Harddrive to Desktop Harddrive Configuration

Recovering the Laptop Data:

There are multiple ways to recover the data from the laptop harddrive and copy it to the desktop harddrive depending on the damage to it.

The easiest way to copy information from one to the other is to boot into your operating system using your working desktop harddrive and have your laptop harddrive set as your secondary drive. This way you desktop harddrive should be set as C:\ and your laptop harddrive as D:\. From here you can simply copy and paste the information across.

However, if there are damaged, unreadable or locked files on the laptop harddrive the the copying may fail halfway though. To stop this you can use a tool such as “Unstoppable Copier” to copy information across. If it encounters a file it cannot copy, the file will be skipped and copying will continue.

The hardrive in this laptop had been seriously damaged from being dropped and Windows wouldn’t detect it properly so I will be using a program called “Ultimate Boot CD for Windows” to copy my data across.

First I verified that I could view the data in UBCD using its inbuilt file viewer called Explorer XP.

Explorer XP in Ultimate Boot CD for Windows

Once verifying that the data on the laptop harddrive is readable I used a program called “Unstoppable Copier” which is included on the “Ultimate Boot CD for Windows” disk.

Navigating to Unstoppable Copier

I chose the source drive as C:\ which was the laptop harddrive and made E:\ the destination drive which is the harddrive on the desktop PC.

Navigating to Unstoppable Copier

Once the data has finished copying over to the desktop hard drive you can install a new harddrive into the laptop and install an operating system onto it such as Windows XP, take it out again and copy the rescued data back onto the good harddrive

In this case, the laptop is not worth repairing because of its age and the amount of damage to it so I will just put the damaged harddrive back into the laptop for examples sake.

Screwing shield back onto the harddrive

Screwing the shield back in place