Laptop died on the eve of my new build. Need data. Suggestions on how to proceed?

[semisonic9]

This is my old Inspiron 9300, which was a great little laptop with an uncanny gift for killing graphics cards.

First, it killed a 6800go. That I replaced under warranty, but that cost me a month's worth of wrangling with Dell's incompetant tech support. They sent the wrong card...three times. My second card lasted until the warranty was up, then promptly bit the dust. No biggy. The laptop was getting a little long in the tooth anyways, so I started planning the new build and got by on the onboard graphics for awhile. But...now I'm pretty sure my onboard graphics card is dying!

I've got about 8-9gb worth of music and probably another 2-3 gigs of data on the hard-drive that I'd like to pull off. I ran Vista XP Pro on the laptop, but am planning to run Vista on the new desktop I'm putting together this weekend. If I just pull out the laptop card and plug it into the desktop rig, will I be able to access the files at all. I believe it's a SATA drive...but I'd probably have to look it up to be sure.

I usually can get a few minutes out of my laptop before the onboard graphics gets too hot (fan issue, I think). I might be able to disassemble the thing enough to get some airflow going in there manually, but that's kind of a PITA. If it's just the screen going out, I may be able to back up to a friends back-up drive and cart the data over that way.

-S

 

[jnex26]

Just take the HD out the laptop and and either put it in a IDE or SATA External enclosure they cost like £15, and to top it off you've then got a extrernal harddisk. and yes you will beabel to access the files unless you turned on bitlocker.

BTW that was a long post for such a simple question.

 

[semisonic9]

That's because I wasn't sure what I was asking. That gets you a sitrep.

Thanks for the info, though.

-S