Will the new pc recognize this HARD DRIVE and simply let go in to local disk c , downloads
Provided the drive is able to be discovered by the PC it's installed in, then yes. Once the drive is discovered, you can then proceed to copy the data to where ever you like. Either the Host PC's "Download" folder or directly to a USB. Keep in mind, if your drive failed due to a virus, you'll want to take care of that 1st, as the new PC may become infected once the drive is connected &/or files transferred. Regardless to the host PC or a new HDD/SSD.
After reading
@USAFRet post below: I realized I wasn't clear enough in what I had initially meant in regards to
@Uhsa question:
@Uhsa - Yes you can install the drive into another PC, and to
@USAFRet point, booting from the bad drive would most likely give you the exact same issues as you are currently having with it installed in your own PC, so just installing it in another PC to boot from, won't fix your issues. What I had meant was that yes, you can install it into another PC and that once the other PC had booted to the desktop, for you to then try to access your faulty drive to attempt to save the files on it. (as opposed to my suggestion of installing the OS on a new HDD or SSD in your own PC and then having the faulty drive also connected and so to try and recover the files on it that way) Also to
@USAFRet point, your drive installed in another PC would now have a different drive letter. So instead of "C:\" like it may be in your PC, It may now say "D:\" or "F:\" or some other letter depending on how the other PC's drives were setup & of how many there were installed.
My apologies for the confusion.