Trapped Information On a Broken Laptop (Data Recovery)

[seeker]

Recently my laptop broke (and I will explain how etc. momentarily) and I had it brought into a repairs shop. Apparently it's "not worth fixing" which I though would be the case. However, all my information is trapped on the HDD which I believe should still be fully functional and still hold all the memory I had on it, but I just cant acess it. I could ask the repairs shop to take it off for me and put it onto an external HDD but it's far too costly and I have too much information for it to be affordable (they charge per gig).

What I have is is a Sony VaioVGN-FZ18L with a 160GB HDD. I'm aware that it takes some dis-assembly of the laptop to reach the HDD and have it disconneted which I'm prepared to do. But I'm not sure as to what to do after that. If someone could throw some suggestions my way it would be greatly appeciated.

As for the issue of it breaking I think it may have started with the RAM. The RAM was only 1GB running on Vista which takes 1GB itself, my laptop is 2-3 years old and it's memory was pretty low anyway and I tend to have a lot going on at once, it just wont turn on any longer. Which is okay, I just wish to retrieve lost info.

Thanks for the help.

Edit: HDD model - Toshiba HDD2d60 S Zk01 S

[Fox♠]

On most laptops theres a pannerl on the bottom, about a third the size of the laptop's base. unscrew that and normally you should be able to get the hdd out that way.

[linkinpark187]

If you look around for a 2.5" SATA external enclosure, that should get you the desired effect of what you're looking for. It will get you access to your old documents for a fraction of the cost of what you would pay for whatever two-bit tech you took your laptop to.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817392032

Something like that would get you where you want to be. Hope I helped! :D

[seeker]

Thanks, and I've done that but it's the next step i'm not so sure on. I'm supposing i need a laptop hard drive adaptor kit but i've never done it so it's something i would wait on until i know better.↲
Edit: yupp that's what i was hoping for! Thanks a bunch i owe you one.

[linkinpark187]

The big beauty about new hard drives is that they're SATA. Every last one of them. So, if you really wanted to, and if your desktop has the SATA ports, then you could in fact put your laptop drive into a desktop computer. Other than that, what I suggested should work with no problems (plus then you can take your documents where you go). Enjoy! :D

ADD: I will say that if you want to put it into a desktop, you will need 2.5" to 3.5" HDD Mounting Brackets, but those are generally very expensive.

[donavannj]

There are several useful devices to get data off of a perfectly good hard drive. My personal favorite is the external USB adapter we have at my workplace, since you can just wipe it clean and sell it off. Though you can get an external enclosure instead if you want to turn it into an external storage drive when you get the data off.

http://i337.photobucket.com/albums/n398/donavannj/sata-2-hard-drive-adapter-usb2.jpg