I recently had a client running Windows 10 and it got a terrible computer virus that was preventing it from starting its computer. Unfortunately, he had tons of files on his hard drive that he needed, so he couldn’t just format and start from scratch.
If you are in a similar situation where you have a hard drive that works great but the operating system does not boot due to some kind of damage to system files or a virus, then there is another way to delete your data sooner. you clean the disc.
In such cases, you need to invest a small amount of money to buy a so-called hard drive docking station. Basically, it is a device that lets you take a SATA hard drive (usually) and connect it to another computer via USB. You can buy a drive with 2.5 or 3.5 inch SATA hard drive slots, meaning you can connect the hard drives to your laptop or desktop computer. If you have an SSD, there are also SSD docking stations.
After you plug in the drive, you just connect it to your computer via USB more often than not, and you can now view your hard drive like an external hard drive! You don’t need to boot the OS or anything else, you can just navigate to the files and folders you want and copy the data.
In this post, I will mention a couple of brands that make really good hard drive docks and where to find them. I highly recommend buying one of these because they are easy to use (if you can remove the hard drive from your computer yourself) and are much cheaper than visiting GeekSquad or other similar technical service.
— /
Thermaltake BlacX Hard Drive Docking Station
Thermaltake Hard Drive Docking Station BlacX
If you do a Google search, you will get several results with different prices. The main differences are that the device has either one or two slots. I would recommend using the dual slot as it will allow you to read disks from both laptops and desktops.
Secondly, most of them connect to your computer via USB, but there is a more expensive one that also has an eSATA connection. I would only recommend this if you need eSATA, otherwise just buy a cheaper USB. This has worked great for me for years.
StarTech External Hard Drive Docking Station
StarTech external hard disk platform
Another really good one is StarTech USB to SATA Dock or StarTech eSATA / USB to SATA Dock. Again, the first option costs $ 20 and the second one costs $ 40-60 due to the additional eSATA option.
So these are my two recommendations for hard drive docking stations. This is the fastest and cheapest way to copy data from a hard drive that is no longer available through conventional methods such as boot, etc. It might even come in handy if you think your hard drive is failing. I was able to copy data from a hard drive that started making clicking sounds using one of them.
Of course there are some problems. For example, if you’ve encrypted your entire hard drive, or even individual files or folders, you won’t be able to view them unless your new computer has the proper encryption keys. Second, you might have to manually override the folder permissions so that you can actually copy the files.
Sometimes, when copying data in this way, you receive an “Access Denied” error when viewing files. This is because it was, for example, from another Windows installation, so you must take ownership of the folders and files, and then you can copy them. Enjoy!
–