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How To Recover Data from Old Hard Drives
6K views
Jun 10, 2024
In this video, you'll discover how to recover data from old hard drives, whether they are internal or external. The tutorial provides a comprehensive guide on using various methods and tools to retrieve files, photos, videos, and documents from hard drives that may no longer be accessible through normal means. You'll learn about software solutions, techniques for connecting and accessing the drive, and best practices for data recovery. By the end of the video, you'll have the knowledge needed to safely and effectively recover data from your old hard drives.
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0:00
Let me show you a simple process for recovering any data you may have on really old hard drives
0:05
This one right here is about 20 years old. This one is also about 18 years old
0:10
I pulled this one out of a Dell laptop. This is from an old PC
0:15
This is also from an old PC and they may have different connections
0:18
so you may have to get a different device here to recover these
0:22
Now some hard drives are not going to be recoverable or your computer is not going to read them
0:26
but I'll show you a software that actually helps you look into these hard drives if your regular computer won't do that as well
0:33
Okay, so the first thing you want to do is you want to look on the back of your hard drive right here
0:38
This is where the power of the hard drive will go and this is the way it connects to a computer
0:44
Now if you look at this one, it's a little bit of a different connection. So this one's a bit newer
0:48
so you'll need a different device to power this up, a different device to power this up
0:53
and this one that came from a laptop, it looks similar to this one, but sometimes it will look like this one
0:59
So the device I'm going to show you actually has all three different types of connectors in the same exact device
1:05
So this is the device that I used to recover two of these drives. One of them actually had physical damage
1:11
but the software I have actually told me that so I need to ship that into a data recovery center
1:17
But this device right here, what it has is it has three different types of connections
1:22
So it really depends on which drive you have and this one actually worked for all three drives
1:28
Two of them took this side and one of them took on to this side
1:31
So let me show you exactly how this works and it has a power supply. And then the connection that goes to your computer is just a regular USB
1:39
This is USB right here, and I needed to get another piece of a dongle here
1:45
So this is just USB to USB-C because I have a newer computer that just doesn't have this old USB connector
1:51
So I also needed to get this. This is for a Mac, but you could get it for a PC
1:56
Same kind of device here and I'll go ahead and link this and the USB dongle in the description
2:01
But this is how simple it is to make this work. You'll take your old hard drive
2:06
line up whatever connector you need. So check the three different sides of this one
2:10
This time it's going to take this side and it pretty much lines up right here like this to your existing
2:17
hard drive. Line it up, just press in, make sure it's connected. So right there I have it connected
2:23
Now this is going to require power as well. So I do need to plug this in too
2:27
So this is going to plug into this right here. It's just a four pin that connects to it like this and then you'll have to plug the whole thing into the wall here
2:36
And the other side, the USB side is going to go to your computer. And then this is a little on and off switch it's going to have to make sure then it's going to power
2:44
your hard drive. Now if you have a different type of hard drive like this one that has a different connector
2:51
so this is a little bit more modern and it has a different connector. This also has this side
2:56
that will connect right over here. Or if you just have this one, you could just get this simpler
3:02
piece right here too that I'll link below as well that I got from Amazon
3:06
And this one just connects very simply to it this way. So it's going to really depend on if you need the hard drive to be powered
3:13
So I usually will recommend this as you're all in one shop. But if you have a simple hard drive, this is a little bit cheaper and it just does one thing
3:20
which is this kind of a more modern connection. But if you have the pins like I showed you in this hard drive
3:26
this is the piece that you need to connect to it. And before I plug it in
3:29
you also might want to get an external hard drive like this because this drive
3:33
even if you recover the information from it, needs to go to a brand new drive
3:37
So you could get a drive like this. This is a SSD. It's fast. It's USB-C connector, new modern connector
3:44
And these are pretty inexpensive for how fast they are. This is two terabytes
3:48
So I'll link this one below. This is just by SanDisk, one of my favorite drives here for restoring any kind of old hard drive
3:54
And the hard drive mounted without any issues. There it is right here. So I could double click it and I could go ahead and take these files and drop them onto that other hard drive that I
4:03
have just to make sure they are now out of this hard drive because I'm not going to want to use this old of a hard drive anymore
4:09
And in some cases that hard drive is not going to show up at all. So you need to get an application
4:15
to show you that hard drive and this one is called Disk Drill and I'll link this below as well
4:21
This is an application you could get for Mac or PC and it's going to let you search for old data
4:26
And this is a really nice way to recover anything from old hard drives if you can't do it this simply
4:32
Sometimes it's just not going to pop up like this. And if there's physical damage, this software will also tell you
4:38
that the device is physically damaged. The hard drive is physically damaged
4:41
So in that case, you might just have to either give up on it or send it to a data recovery center
4:46
But those could cost you a thousand, sometimes two thousand dollars to recover old data
4:52
Hopefully the first option works for you and your device mounts just like this and you recover your old data from your old hard drive
4:59
Thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time
#Computer Drives & Storage
#Computer Hardware
#Software