Parents PC died a while ago and took with it a load of holiday photos from Egypt and Cyprus. They still have the HD, so is there any way to plug it in and recover the photos?

 

Their replacement PC is still under warranty, so want to avoid opening the case.

 

TIA.

I recovered some pictures for a mate of mine with a free piece of software that runs through Terminal on a Mac, I set it running and about two hours later it had recovered every picture that had ever been on the hard drive, we were amazed at the amount of images it recovered. 

 

 We did have to remove the hard drive from the PC and put it into a case (icy box) so it could be attached via USB to the searching Mac.

You can get a case which you put the old drive in and then plug it in via USB. I would guess the old drive is SATA.

Something like this:

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/components-upgrades/internal-hard-drives/enclosures/dynamode-usb-hd3-5si-bn-3-5-sata-ide-usb-2-0-enclosure-black-19300678-pdt.html

If there is an issue with the old drive then there is a programming called Photorec which is designed to recover photos that have been deleted. But it will recover loads of different files.

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If the drive is the old IDE format then the options are more limited.

 

Something like this would work with both SATA and IDE for a temporary connection.

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/icy-dock-2535-inch-sataide-usb-dock-a34lq

freeware called Recuva even gets back stuff deleted by mistake

I use one of these

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-2-5-3-5-DUAL-IDE-SATA-HDD-HARD-DRIVE-DISK-DOCK-DOCKING-STATION-USB-HUB-/171342698905?pt=UK_Collectables_HardDriveEnclosures_RL&hash=item27e4d21999

A bit cheaper than the Icy Dock at Maplin and handy as well if you have a collection of spare hard drives to use for storage.

Thanks for all the replies. Good to know there is plenty of options available out there for recovery.

I use one of these

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-2-5-3-5-DUAL-IDE-SATA-HDD-HARD-DRIVE-DISK-DOCK-DOCKING-STATION-USB-HUB-/171342698905?pt=UK_Collectables_HardDriveEnclosures_RL&hash=item27e4d21999

A bit cheaper than the Icy Dock at Maplin and handy as well if you have a collection of spare hard drives to use for storage.

I also have one of these and it's excellent for the money. Just don't drop it on the floor like I did...

I bought 2 cases for about 10quid each for 2 old laptop drives it was a combination data and mini ide port jobby, usb connection straight in, turned em both into external hdds. They were 2.5" drives loads around for 3.5" drives too. Should take all of 5 mins to sort out and get hunting the pics on a very big flash drive...

Do these docking stations allow you to access more than just pictures, dococuments for example?

Yep, full access to the drive data. As long as it's not corrupted of course.