10+ year old HDD

My mom's 10+ year old computer died the other day. The light indicator for the PSU lights up but the computer doesn't do anything. When I took a look inside I saw the processor fan was just caked with gunk, dust, etc. It looked like somebody threw mud at it.

Anyways, she has this stuff on her HDD that she was wanting to retrieve. I thought I could just take the HDD out of her computer and hook it into mine and get whatever data she wanted that way and burn it to disc. Is that possible? Or is there another way? My computer is a year old, btw, and runs Windows 7 Home Premium. Her computer was running windows xp sp2.

I don't know what other information to provide for a response right now.

Thanks.

mos effed said:

I thought I could just take the HDD out of her computer and hook it into mine and get whatever data she wanted that way and burn it to disc. Is that possible?

Yes, that's what I would do.... provided you can connect the hard drive to your system as LiquidSnak has suggested.

Also, If you hook up the drive, check to see that it has no viruses lurking

LiquidSnak said:

It would be a fairly simple thing to do. Due to the age, I assume it is a PATA drive, or IDE connection as it is referred te.

Do you have an external HDD enclosure?

I don't have an external HDD enclosure. I guess I should find a spot to lock it down in my tower. My tower is a NZXT guardian 921. I only have one HDD in it now so I'm assuming there's room for another.

sygnus21 said:

mos effed said:

I thought I could just take the HDD out of her computer and hook it into mine and get whatever data she wanted that way and burn it to disc. Is that possible?

Yes, that's what I would do.... provided you can connect the hard drive to your system as LiquidSnak has suggested.

Also, If you hook up the drive, check to see that it has no viruses lurking

Good advice, Sygnus. I usually overlook the small details in my quest to get to the final end. https://www.sevenforums.com/images/smilies/nerd.png

LiquidSnak said:

If you don't have an external enclosure, you will likely have to tack it onto your MoBo. Do you have an available IDE cable? Plug it in, but make sure that it's set to slave on the jumper settings :)

Ok, on the HDD it gives me a diagram for the settings, but they're for lower 32g and upper 32g and 32g clip? It's a samsung spinpoint sv4002H.

update: it's currently set for uppper 32g cable select. so I've changed that to the slave settings.

@Dirty Elf, my mobo is an asus p6t se