Accessing old HD in broken computer

I have a computer that is about six years old, and its power supply has failed. This computer’s hard drive contains several files that I would like to retrieve. I do not care about salvaging the computer itself because it's so ancient, and I have a new one. What is my best course of action for getting the files off the hard drive?

1. Replace the power supply of the old computer. I have a third computer (four years old, little value to me) with a working power supply that I could scrap for the repair. I do not know if compatibility is an issue. I have no prior experience replacing a power supply.

2. Move the old hard drive to a newer computer. I also have no experience with this type of installation. I do not care about gaining extra disk space on my new computer so please ignore that benefit.

3. Another option?

I am looking for the easiest solution to temporarily access this hard drive. Please help.

Thanks!

Andrew

Options 1 and 2 are about the same as far as actual work and difficulty. With number one you have a bunch of power connection you would need to disconnect/reconnect as well as hope that both systems are using the same type of power supply AT vs ATX. Given the age this is a remote possibility as 98/99 was the transition from AT to ATX. With number 2 you have to deal with a power connection, ribon cable and jumper settings (master/slave). Typically you won't need to mess with the BIOS as the hard drive channel is usually set to autodetect.

If your freaked out by any of this option 3 would be getting some one else to hook the HD up to your other puter or burning to disk for you. But if you can handle a screw driver and matching pins with plugs I'd go with option 1 first.

I suggest #2. It is very easy to slave a hard drive.

The difference of opinion here likely shows that either is really pretty trivial.

Yep. It's a matter of preference really. Big plugs on the power supply or small jumpers on the HD to set master slave.

[Meech]

If you don't feel like breaking into your new computer to add the drive as a slave, just pickup a USB external drive enclosure. linky

After you are done pulling your files off, you can slap a decent size drive in there and use it for backups/offline storage.

Thanks for this tip about the external drive enclosure. I went out and bought one of these for $40. I think it will be a useful item going forward, although I could not get it to work last night. I only had a half-hour to mess with it, though, so I'm hoping tonight will show some results.

Thanks again.

Andrew

[Meech]

You are welcome. They are quite handy. I swap in and out a spare HD for offline storage and backups. Too cheap/lazy to pickup another enclosure, lol.

In my experience with them on XP, they just work -- assuming the drive is still good (and jumpered correctly).