The motherboard on my laptop was cracked, rendering it useless. What's the cheapest method of data recovery?

Question

I have an Acer laptop that won't do more then show the "user page" not allowing me to sign in, because of what the tech guy called an apparent drop to the floor. Either way, the point is that i cannot, to my knowledge, get data off the computer through the obvious methods if i cant even log in. i am wondering what you have found to be the cheapest way to retrieve my files from the still-fine internal hard drive. the tech guys were trying to charge me outrageous money to probably use an enclosure or "housing"? What can I do myself without spending money on services? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

take out the hard drive and buy an enclosure, they are only around 30-50 dollars, and it would plug into your other computer through usb  

Answer 2

If your hard drive is in tact all you have to do is connect that hard drive to another computer.  It should be very easy if you can access another laptop of the same brand and similar model but even if you can't do that, you should be able to connect it externally to another computer.  I did that with my old Hitachi laptop to copy some of the information to my new Gateway laptop.  Fortunately for me I had the cables I needed to make the connection, if you don't then call Radio Shack and ask them if they have what you need.  You might want to take both the old hard drive and working laptop with you and go to the store so they can look at them to see exactly what you need.

Answer 3

you can take the hard drive out, and buy a 2.5 mm laptop hard drive to use adapter, hook it up 2 the laptop hard drive, and then plug the usb into a working computer, and copy all ur files n folders off of it.  

Answer 4

Too easy!!!!  yes they are thieves!!!! but that is american capitalism at its finest...

Ok heres what u do, if you reallyyyyy wanto do this on penies.. got to newegg.com and buy the most generic hard drive enclosure from them, ( i got mine for 13 bucks ) make sure u get the correct connections for your laptop drive ide or sata then just hook up the drive to anyother pc and acces your files from there... done!

Answer 5

A cracked board? The problem is even in retreival there's less than a 50% chance of getting that data back. At work our server broke down and we lost all work for the prior two weeks as our backups were not working. They would of chaged about 2,000 or so to "attempt" with no garuntee of getting that data back.

When it's cracked that means it's broken with absolutley no chance of being able to be repaired.

Answer 6

Without being able to log on there's not much you can do.If you're replacing the mobo, there's no need to do anything.If you're replacing the laptop,get an external enclosure and use the hard drive there.