[2022 Guide] How to Get Data from Old Laptop Hard Drive

No matter how well a laptop works at first, as time passes, it will one day become slow or fail to boot due to various problems. That's when we buy new laptops. Upgrading to a new laptop is exciting, however, there is no data on the new laptop - all the data is on the previous one, which makes it less convenient to use. So you’d like to get files from old laptop hard drive, right?

Fortunately, it is not a difficult task to get data off old laptop hard drive. All you have to do is take out the hard drive and connect it to the new laptop. There is no need to mount the drive inside your new laptop. The trickiest part may be finding the cable to connect the hard drive. Without much ado, let’s start to see how to get data from old laptop hard drive.

How to get data from old laptop hard drive

Here are the detailed steps about how to get data from old laptop hard drive. We will show you how to copy certain files to the new laptop or clone the entire hard drive.

How to get data off old laptop hard drive

Process:

• Find an external dock or adapter
• Connect hard drive to new laptop
• Copy data from old hard drive to new laptop

Step 1. Find an external dock or adapter

There are different kinds of gadgets that allow you to connect hard drive to laptop as an external drive. If you want to easily connect your old hard drive to PC temporarily, a dock or a simple adapter is recommended. A dock is a good choice if you routinely work with old drives while a special USB cable adapter is probably better if you just need to do it once.

Step 2. Take out hard drive and connect it to new laptop

If the hard drive is still in the previous computer, you can unlock your old laptop case with a screwdriver and take the hard drive out.

To connect hard drive via a dock, you should connect the dock to your new laptop > drop the hard drive into the slot > turn the dock on.

To connect hard drive via the adapter, you should plug the adapter into laptop’s USB port > plug in the power via the molex adapter unit > turn on the switch on the power cable.

Step 3. Get data off old laptop hard drive

When the drive is properly connected to the new laptop, it will show up in Windows as a removable drive. Now you can open the drive to find needed files and copy them to new computer.

★Tips:

If you are trying to open folders on the old hard drive with Windows OS installed, a pop-up window may appear saying that you don’t have permission to access the folder. In this case, just click Continue option. It will assign permission to your currently signed-in account.

If the drive does not appear in File Explorer, check to see if both the power and data cables are connected properly.

Get data from old laptop hard drive - clone all data

If you want to get data off old laptop hard drive so you can use the same OS, settings, data on new device, you may choose to use hard drive cloning software to clone old laptop hard drive to new computer.

AOMEI Backupper is one free Windows backup tool as well as a hard drive cloning software. The Disk Clone feature can help you clone hard drive in different size without reinstalling Windows. Not only to a larger drive but also to a smaller one.

1. Connect old laptop hard drive and make sure it can be detected.

2. Download, install and launch AOMEI Backupper on computer.

3. Choose Clone and select Disk Clone.

4. Select the source disk and then select the target disk.

5. Click Start Clone to make it.

All existing data on the target drive will be overwritten. So you’d better backup important files ahead of time.

How to recover data from old laptop hard drive

If you can’t find needed files on old laptop hard drive, you can let MyRecover help you recover data from old laptop hard drive. This tool can scan the hard drive and find all deleted and missing files.

Steps to recover data from old laptop hard drive

1. Click the download button to get ADR for Windows.

2. Connect old laptop hard drive and launch MyRecover.

3. Hover the mouse over the drive saved deleted files before, and click Scan to scan.

4. The tool will scan the hard drive via Quick Scan and Deep Scan. Quick Scan aims at finding deleted data, while Deep Scan searches for other lost data.

5. The files found by the software will be listed in the Scanned files list. When you find the files you need, you can select the files and click Recover button to get them to new laptop. If necessary, you can wait for the complete scan results.

Final words

That’s all about how to get data off old laptop hard drive. To access files on the hard drive, you can use a USB hard drive adapter to connect the drive to new computer. In this way, you can simply transfer certain files to new computer or clone the entire drive via cloning software. If you can’t find needed files, let ADR for Windows to scan the drive and recover deleted data.