Best way to get data off a laptop with a bad hard drive

[tom9042]

My friend has a IBM Thinkpad, which had a hard drive crash. He was sent a new drive and it works fine. I can get the computer to boot with a Windows 95 startup disk and can see the data (the machine can't boot with the hard drive). I even copied one file onto a floppy using DOS as a test. I need some alternatives on getting the remaining data off the hard drive, which has a lot of photos on it. The Thinkpad has a CD burner. It appears that I would have to use a DOS program and maybe a tape backup unit. Does this sound right or is there a better way? Is there a DOS program for CD burners? Thanks for any input and have a happy holiday!

 

[ditchhopper]

If you can get the bad drive running with a startup disk maybe you could network to another computer and pull the files out that way. Not sure if this would work though, your operating system
would have to be functional on the bad drive. Is it booting normally or in safe mode?

 

[tom9042]

The laptop only boots to DOS. If I use the IBM CD, it wants to reformat the drive and ghost a new system. That's why I think I have to work in DOS.

 

[sboulema]

dont know if its possible, but cant you just rip the harddrive out of the laptop and put in the other pc and copy the files ?

 

[Zedric]

In most cases no. The connectors are different.

You could boot off a Linux CD (like ISO-Linux) and copy the files over a network. Requires a little Linux-knowledge probably though.

 

[sboulema]

if you give a try to zedrics'way, then be sure to have a look at knoppix (www.knoppix.com)

 

[Elroy Jetson]

Originally posted by tom9042
My friend has a IBM Thinkpad, which had a hard drive crash. He was sent a new drive and it works fine. I can get the computer to boot with a Windows 95 startup disk and can see the data (the machine can't boot with the hard drive). I even copied one file onto a floppy using DOS as a test. I need some alternatives on getting the remaining data off the hard drive, which has a lot of photos on it. The Thinkpad has a CD burner. It appears that I would have to use a DOS program and maybe a tape backup unit. Does this sound right or is there a better way? Is there a DOS program for CD burners? Thanks for any input and have a happy holiday!

You could try to get the IR port to work (in the bios) and use a second leptop to retrieve all the data. might be slow, but could work....

or

use an external (maxtor) hhd which connects to the usb port, if you can initiate the ports, you could copy the data to the external drive, should be no problem, as it acts just like a drive, no sofware required!

Good luck, EJ