Hello,
My mum’s old laptop is defunct and we would like to hire a person to retrieve the contents of the harddrive. It is a ~40 GB Fujitsu MHV2040AH, circa 2006. I’m not sure how much data is on it. She is mostly interested in her photos but I think the simplest version of the job is to simply transfer the entire contents to a suitable SD card or USB stick.
If you are interested, please reach out with a price and/or questions.
Kane
604-376-0779
PC Galore on 4th or The Hackery on Victoria would be your best bets.
Harondel J. Sibble
Sibble Computer Consulting
Harondel@pdscc.com
604-739-3709
Is this project done by now? The drive is a 2.5-inch PATA/IDE HDD, which means it needs only 5 VDC instead of both 5 VDC and 12 VDC like a 3.5-inch or larger HDD, which means it can be powered only by a USB cable that is used for data too. The only hardware you need to access this drive from another computer that is already running an OS is a 2.5-inch PATA AKA 44-pin PATA (40 pins for miniature PATA data connector plus 4 pins for power, which are on a separate connector on a 3.5-inch or larger PATA(PI) drive)↔USB converter/bridge board, which is commonly available as part of a 2.5-inch drive case/enclosure but you do not need the drive case, you only need the converter/bridge board. You will need support for the file system(s) used on the drive but that should not be a problem unless your mother used an uncommon configuration.
You can also buy an adapter board to connect a 2.5-inch PATA drive to a desktop computer that uses the larger version of the 40-pin PATA data connector with a separate 4-pin connector for power. Both of these hardware products are available on eBay if you do not know where to buy them. I guess this topic will be locked because I am necroposting and certain participants of this forum seem to dislike necroposting but if you still need someone to complete this job for you then I can probably complete it for you because I already have everything necessary. I even happen to have a spare 32-GB 2.5-inch PATA (yes, not SATA) SSD so, assuming your drive still works and does not have too much space used in the file system(s) on it, I could even clone your HDD onto an SSD for you in case you want to continue using the same logical drive in a computer that can boot from a PATA drive. I have a bunch of old x86 notebook computers that use an internal 2.5-inch PATA HDD/SSD in case you want any of them.
