I have purchased a "toaster style" enclosure for this/repairing drives. Should be able to find one under $30 that you plug in either a 2.5 or 3.5 inch drive, then USB into your current computer. If the drives aren't reading properly, there are some software programs that should help you access. I remember one being something similar sounding to "undelete my drive."
If the computers are running, then you could plug in an external hard drive into the computers (assuming they have USB). If not, you can pull out the hard drives and put them into the toaster that I mentioned and plug them into your modern computer, to drag onto that drive.
If you are buying an external enclosure for just this transfer purpose, I recommend again to buy a toaster style one. It'll cost the same as a sealed enclosure and is more versatile.
Is an 11-year old HD likely to be SATA? I don't know when they switched from IDE but IDE won't fit in the toaster enclosures, will they?
I think he means to put a new sata drive into the toaster and plug the toaster into the USB plug on the computer.
Something like this I use on my Bell PVR. There are cheaper ones with only one slot. Easy to use, no tools needed and you don't need a separate enclosure for every hard drive.
Yes totally off topic but i still wanted to share that just now I replaced the PS4's original 500GB hard drive to a 2TB Seagate Backup Ultra Slim. It was actually a lot of fun to do even though it's totally out of character for me. I did some formatting, file dragging, downloading and even used a screwdriver!
I now have 72 minutes left on my restore from my WD passport which i used to backup everything but id like to thank Diemenz with all of his assistance, much appreciated my friend.
I have a 2TB WD MyBook that I've been using to backup my main PC. I recently moved my PC from one end of the room to the other, and I noticed that the disk was constantly in "Disk Discovering" mode. I Don't exactly remember when this started, but physically moving the PC must be the culprit. When I open the software it says there is no writable partition on the disk.
I uninstalled and reinstalled the software a bunch of times and tried things like:
It says my disk isn't initialized when I try these steps. When I attempt to initialize, it says there is a fatal hardware error.
Two questions:
1. All my files are on my computer so I didn't "lose" anything, but it's unnerving not having a backup currently. However, is it possible to fix this drive and recovery everything?
2. If not, is it easier to buy a new one and re-backup my PC?
External Storage
