Latop HD question

[Dragon2k4]

Hiyall,

My laptop USB ports have all packed in for some reason all at the same time, so now I can't backup any data via external HD or other usb devices. Thing is, ive had the laptop for a while and now have had other hardware probs in the past. Question is, i've ordered a new laptop and i was wondering if it would be possible to take out my current HD and put it into the new laptop to retrieve the data from it, is this possible and would there be any problems?

Current laptop has XP, new laptop will have Vista.

Thanks!

[CMcK]

Does the old laptop have a firewire port? Use that for an external HDD for future backups. Should be a wee bit quicker than via USB.

IIRC you can make a local network via firewire with Windows so connect the two laptops and transfer away.

Failing that connect the two laptops via ethernet and make a wee network and backup stuff to the new machine.

[Dragon2k4]

I see, nope the old one doesnt have either a ethernet card or firewire, its pretty basic.

What would happen if i plugged it into the new laptop, could i not retrieve the data out from there?

[huxley]

You could lob it in a caddie and hunt out your docs etc

[CMcK]

If you plug the old HDD into the new laptop it will need time for Windows to hunt out all the new drivers etc. Besides there is no guarantee it will hook up. It's likely your old laptop will use a PATA connector and your new machine will use a SATA connection.

Can you not burn the data you want to keep on a CD?

Otherwise as Huxley said fit the old drive to a caddy or just buy a simple IDE to USB converter and use that to transfer the files.

[Dragon2k4]

Thx guys, i realised i had a enclosure ext hd a while ago and i just put my current laptop HD drive in there now, worked fine