When an old computer is sent to recycle heaven or a new computers hard drive dies, the data on the old hard drive may be retrievable. Most of the data is quite easy to transfer with right tools. There are a few different ways to achieve this.
The best way if you are going to do it yourself is to purchase an external hard drive
encloser, essentially turning your old hard drive into an external hard drive. It is important to find out what kind of hard drive it is, that is whether it is a
IDE hard drive or a
SATA hard drive.
Once the hard drive is in the
encloser, plug the hard drive into the computer via the
USB port if you have
autoplay enabled, it will give you several options. Choose to view files on device.
Once in you can begin to do you data transfer. What I do is stretch the window to take up half of my screen, then I click on the start menu and My Computer and double click the C drive. I then
stretch that window and move it to take up the other half of the screen.
The most common data files will all be in the same places unless you have other wise indicated.
On the Old hard drive double click Documents and Settings (
XP) or Users (Vista) and select the the appropriate user (Johnny, Owner, Administrator, IBM OS, etc) and on your computer which is the C drive do the same.
Now if it
XP to
XP or Vista to Vista you will have a mirror effect and both will be similar in looks. If it is
XP to Vista it will be similar, but different.
Drag from the old computer, Favorites, Desktop, My Documents (
Johnnys Documents) and any other items that you want. Realize that in the My Documents folder are you Pictures, Music, Video, and such.
If you use a Kodak camera or
Opiflex, realize that they do not save your pictures in My Pictures so you may have to do some investigating to find them. For Kodak pictures, they are in the Shared Documents folder.
Now for the more difficult one. Email and Address Book. For this you need to do several things.
Outlook Express
XP - Email
- On the window that your documents are in click on the Tools, then Folder Options, then click the view tab and select Show hidden files and folders.
- Open up Outlook Express.
- Now click File, Import, Messages, Microsoft Outlook Express 6, Import Mail from OE6 Store Directory.
- Click Browse and navigate to your old hard drive, Documents and Settings, your user, Local Settings, Application Data, Identities, Big Long Alpha Numeric string, Microsoft, and Outlook.
- Click open and now your email should be being imported.
XP - Address Book
- Click File, Import, Address Book.
- Navigate to your old hard drive, Documents and Settings, your user, Application Data, Microsoft and Address book.
- Click open and bingo, there is your address book.
Vista - Windows Mail
- On the window that your documents are in click on the Organize tab, then the Folders and Search option, then click the view tab and select Show hidden files and folders.
- Open Windows Mail.
- Now click File, Import, Messages, if your are importing from XP, follow the XP instructions from above at this point, if your are importing Windows Mail, select Windows Mail 7 and then Browse.
- Click Computer, your old hard drive, Users, your user, AppData, Local, Microsoft, Windows Mail and then click Select Folder, and OK and there is you Windows Mail.
Vista - Address Book
- Unlike Windows XP, your contacts are in on the old hard drive in your user folder, and your users name then contacts. Just copy that into the same folder on your computers hard drive and they will all be there.
Now there may be other files that you have saved in different locations, make sure to double check. But if you have purchased an external hard drive
encloser, you can always look later.
Hope this has helped and made a stressful time a little
easier.
--KC
