sata hard drive

[Robert36]

I have a dead compaq laptop. I bought a sata adaptor and a identical secondhand compaq laptop. When I went to remove files from the hard drive, there are only a few small files from Abi word office program there. I had lots of documents from Open Office writer (100,000s of words) and I can't see them anywhere, nor any photos from the hard drive. Can anyone help? is it because I have windows 10?

 

[Math Geek]

why did the first laptop die?? it's possible that when the other laptop "died" it took some stuff with it. so what happened to the other system to see if perhaps this could be the case.

 

[Robert36]

Its just very old, and has black screen (tried draining power, changing RAM) Just wondering why there are so many documents missing, and why some are there (Abi words docs are on H drive)

 

[Math Geek]

it's also possible your adapter does not like the hdd. seen that before as well. you may be able to swap the drive into the second laptop and it should boot up if it is the same model. then you can copy the files onto a thumb drive.

other option and the one i tend to use myself is to plug it into a desktop pc internally. the pc should see it on boot up and give access to the files if they are still there and accessible. i've used adapters before but they are very buggy and never worked 100% for me. so i just drop it into a pc and go from there.

 

[Robert36]

Sorry, I'm clueless. What's the hdd? I tried putting the old hard drive into new laptop but it just came up on screen saying doesn't recognise hard drive. Thanks for your help by the way.

 

[Math Geek]

sorry hdd is just short for hard drive.

last option is to put it into a desktop pc. it will still boot to the right drive but will let you access the second drive assuming it is still working. always a possibility the drive is messed up, especially an older drive.

 

[Robert36]

I'll try the desktop option. Thanks for your advice.

 

[Math Geek]

no problem.