Reddit reviews Thermaltake BlacX Hot-Swap SATA External Hard Drive Docking Station for Windows & Mac Os Compatible

IF you have a standard SATA hard drive in the laptop (and as a last resort), you could remove the hard drive and plug it into one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Hot-Swap-External-Docking-Compatible/dp/B001A4HAFS

Please note--once you plug the hard drive into the enclosure, turn on the power and connect it via USB to another computer, it can take a REALLY long time for the disk to show up on the second computer. Once it does, you should be able to copy any important files from the disc.

Sorry for your loss.

In my experience some of them do support it, in fact I think the one we use at the shop for that purpose is actually the same one from the show.

You could pay someone to try and recover what they can from it, or you can buy a https://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Hot-Swap-External-Docking-Compatible/dp/B001A4HAFS and take out the laptop harddrive and plug it into that USB hard drive dock. It essentially just turns any laptop/desktop hard-drive into an external hard-drive. I've had to do that before to save some projects from a dying hard drive.

Worst case scenario, you don't get any of your projects back, and you can think of it as a fresh start. I've had to do that before, and it was very freeing. It feels shitty at first, but at least in my case, it was a huge boon to my productivity when I didn't have a bunch of subconscious guilt/weight from not finishing certain projects.

Don't use tapes. Disks are cheap. Get something like this. 2TB is a tiny amount of data. 4TB drives are out!

Then you should be able to use windows backup or any other cheap/free backup package.

I keep a hard drive dock around.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-eSATA-Docking-Station/dp/B001A4HAFS/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1395113721&sr=8-11&keywords=hard+drive+dock

Of course, they were cheaper back then...

I would suggest an external HDD dock.

https://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Hot-Swap-External-Docking-Compatible/dp/B001A4HAFS (something like that)

It allows you to connect a HDD/SSD to it, then connect via USB to a computer. It serves the same function as an enclosure, but is easier to work with.

Aside from the other good suggestions...

1. Metro Data-Vac No more canned air for me, ever.
   
2. A Thermaltake Blacx Drive Cradle Invaluable for recovering data from otherwise compromised PCs.

> Now, she can't even turn on the computer.

Sorry, I was skimming before and missed that part. Does it turn on when it's plugged in? If not, scratch the part about firewire and target-disk-mode. If it won't turn on, we'll go about this in a different manner. So, here's what I would do:

I checked the specs on the 2006 MacBook http://support.apple.com/kb/SP23 (and was relieved to see that the drives use a serial ATA connection) That's good because there are 'caddies' on the market which are not too costly which let you plug a SATA drive into them and turn it into an external disk. I swear by these things. They have helped many times for situations such as this.

This is the one I use:

http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-eSATA-Docking-Station/dp/B001A4HAFS/ref=pd_sim_e_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=1REARCQN1WCN8ECNF35B


You just have to take the drive out and put it into one of those caddies, then you can access it like any usb external. Minding of course, macs use a different filesystem than PC's. I think windows can read the mac filesystem but not write to it, without needing any drivers. We can deal with that when we get to it.

Here's a guide to taking the HD out of the macbook:
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Core+Duo+Hard+Drive+Replacement/282

The screwdriver bits you'll need:

• a tiny P0 philips-head to open the case
  
• a torx T8 six-sided-star-head to get the HD out of it's enclosure.
  
  Don't be scared! Maybe one of your local nerds might even have the tools and a BlacX dock they could loan you. Holler if you have any more questions.

This one is less bulky and works with newer and older drives. I take this one with me whenever I get the inevitable calls from family at 3:00 AM :)

And this one is meant as a docking station. I have one of these at my office for convenience.

I haven't had any problems with either of them.

No reason to save to cloud if you can afford a hard drive docking bay. I mean yea I guess the cloud you don't have to worry about it, but I bought a few refurbished desktop internals and went with something like this... http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-St0005u-Docking-Station-Compatible/dp/B001A4HAFS

Edit: misread your question. Yea dropbox, Google drive, etc setup folders on your comp that are auto linked to the cloud. For personal storage though, if you have a lot...hd docking bays are the way to backup all your install files and sounds.

Something like this

http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-eSATA-Docking-Station/dp/B001A4HAFS

Thermaltake BlacX eSATA USB Docking Station

I use this hdd dock with a 2TB HDD with my rpi (raspmbc). The performance is decent for scrolling through my large library and perfect performance for playback.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-eSATA-Docking-Station/dp/B001A4HAFS/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1394941488&sr=8-9&keywords=hdd+dock

Get him one of these. :)

If you have access to another mac. You can open your mac up. Take the hard drive out and stick in HD chassis. Then pull whatever you need off.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001A4HAFS

This is one I've happen to use and did it's job well.

Just an FYI if you had a HDD toaster you could simply pop the drive in and grab the pertinent data. Also, freaking awesome on the Muai Thai. Ask him if he is a Kru or teacher pronounced crew.

Right here, I own it , and its totally worth it. Not the same brand, but the same thing almost.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-eSATA-Docking-Station/dp/B001A4HAFS/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=miscellaneous&qid=1259704133&sr=8-3

Also Brando sells many different types, check them out, not sure if they have a lan port or not

http://usb.brando.com/usb-hdd-dock_c057d015

You can pull the HDD and get something like this. I have one, it works great. Hope that helps.

Is your hard disk still being detected by the system? Have you tried the drive in another PC? Have you tried it in a toaster to attempt to retrieve your files?

I posted, but then deleted as I don't really think I understand your concern here.

Is your concern that you won't be able to use your ubuntu flash drive to boot a machine with a broken windows OS to retrieve data?

Do you have extra hard drives? What we do sometimes for a complete wipe/re-image is we remove the hard drive, put a new/spare one in and then once that image is up, we dock it with one of these and start transferring the data from the old drive.

>it has my schoolwork on it

>i tried to reinstall windows

reinstalling Windows typically involves re-formatting the drive/partition its intended to go on, so depending on what you've actually done at this point may make recovering your data much more difficult, or impossible.

>no operating system found

this either means the drive that Windows was installed on has died, or the file system/MBR has become corrupt enough that the BIOS isn't detecting an OS being installed.

I suggest getting something like this, pulling the drives from your computer, and using that dock to pull your data off and temporarily saving it on another computer.

HDD brand doesn't matter. IDK how much data you have, but get an SSD if you don't have much. Recovering an image is going to be really fucking hard with it being a failed drive. You'd be better served getting "a toaster" https://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Hot-Swap-External-Docking-Compatible/dp/B001A4HAFS like this and just dragging any files you can with a clean install. Keep in mind, you will probably lose stuff. You waited til it was failing. Open the computer, unscrew the drive, take the cables out, put the new drive in, screw it back together, and put the cables back in. It's a desktop, if the drive you linked is the right one. It's very, very easy.

Bunch of these?

https://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Hot-Swap-External-Docking-Compatible/dp/B001A4HAFS

Just as a thought, I would personally purchase a new external hard drive. I would want to make sure that my backup would be the freshest drive possible to minimize the chance of drive failure, and the drive you are using has had movement, impacts, etc since 2011 when you bought your laptop. I think it would make a great disk for moving files around but not for a backup.

As for mounting external drives to a computer, I have the Thermaltake BlacX docking station. It allows me to hot swap between bare drives I have. May not work for you, but I find it convenient.

Edit: http://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-BlacX-eSATA-Docking-Station/dp/B001A4HAFS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1394287395&sr=8-1&keywords=thermaltake+external+drive

Edit Again: Also stay way from OCZ SSD's I have had 3+ fail on me. They are horrible. I personally love the intel drives, they are more expensive but are very robust.