SATA Hard Drive Question
 

I had a computer die and I need to get the data off the hard drive. I'm assuming the drive is still good and ideally I'd like to use it as an external drive for picture/music backup. I've looked around and found several possibilities, but one issue has got me confused. I see products for 3.5 drives, but when I measured mine it's four inches. Do I need to find something for a four inch drive or is it industry standard to call a four inch a 3.5?

Also, any recommendations on products would be appreciated.

I believe the measurement is the size of the platter. All you are measuring is the casing, which can vary by manufacturer.

You just need to buy a standard enclosure for a 3.5 drive and you'll be fine. Are you sure its a SATA drive and not PATA/EIDE?

As for specific models, I usually start my research at newegg sorting by rating and/or most reviews:
Newegg.com - External Enclosures, Computer Cases

Thanks guys. I've got two so I think I've decided on a 3.5 dock, but I may need to wait until the first of the month!

I got the dock today and everything works, except I can't get to the files that were on the desktop of my old computer. I can access the shortcuts, but not the files or folders. I also can't get to my music files. Can anyone help my on this?

If it helps the current computer is running Vista while the drive was XP.

Just a guess, but likely it's in a different desktop folder.

Rather than
c:\Docs and Settings\{user name}\Desktop
It's in
c:\Docs and Settings\All Users\Desktop

SI

as a fall back, do a search for

*.mp3, *.jpg

or whatever type of file on the entire drive and it should locate them for you.

In case anyone else ever runs into this problem, I finally figured it out. I needed to change ownership of the admin file so that it would show me the desktop files/folders and things like My Music. Took a while to figure out, but now everything is working. Thanks for the suggestions guys.