Aspire 7250-0209 - Case for Hard Drive

Last spring, my Aspire 7250-0209, which I'd only had a year and a half or so, met up with a leaking water bottle as I was toting it to a horse show where I was going to use it for some scoring. After it dried out, I could get it to power up, the light on the DVD drive would go on, I could hear the hard drive spinning, but nothing happened with the screen. I tried connecting it to an external monitor and nothing happens, so I surmise the video card is fried.

Therefore, it's time to open things up and harvest the hard drive. I did this before with the assistance of some knowledgable friends and was able to put the hard drive into an inexpensive case that I bought online and it functioned more or less like an external hard drive. What I am wondering is what are the physical dimensions of the hard drive for this machine and what types of cables will I need? I would like to buy the case ahead of time before I open things up and start fussing with it. My other alternative is to take it to a local computer shop where a friend just had similar work done, but that guy charged $80 to do it, and that's money I'd rather use for something else.

Thanks for any advice you might have.

Accepted answers

laskiblue

Thank you! That's exactly what I needed to know. Last time I did this, the first case I bought was wrong and I'd rather not play trial and error again. I appreciate your help.

All comments

IronFly

So you need an external HDD USB enclosure, any of this will work (just check they will fit a 9.5mm HDD height):

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=hdd+usb+enclosure+2.5%22+sata&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ahdd+usb+enclosure+2.5%22+sata

laskiblue

Thank you! That's exactly what I needed to know. Last time I did this, the first case I bought was wrong and I'd rather not play trial and error again. I appreciate your help.

IronFly

you welcome.

laskiblue

Got it! I'm a newbie here, so thanks for the info. :-)

laskiblue

So here's an update on my situation. It's been a long time since I performed any computer surgeries (LOL), but my need to retrieve SPSS (statistical software) if possible from my laptop that was unfortunately water-damaged last year led me to make a few inquiries here and acquire a case for the computer's hard drive.

Well, the patient is alive -- sort of. The drive is running, is clearly showing that there's data on it, but is telling me I can't access anything because it is SYSTEM RESERVED (caps per my computer, not mine). This makes sense -- the old computer was Windows 7. My new one is running Windows 10. My next experiment will be connecting the drive to my Windows XP netbook to see if I can retrieve anything useful that way. Incidentally, the old computer starts up, but nothing comes on the screen.

Should I see about taking the old computer to a repair shop to replace the screen and/or video card? Should I search for ways to boot up the Windows 7 drive by itself using my present laptopn should I need it? Could I perhaps find an otherwise okay Windows 7 machine to stick the hard drive into so I can at least run SPSS? Any suggestions? Many thanks!

ANOTHER UPDATE: I looked a little closer and found that there was another hard drive referenced, and, sure enough, it was the data from the old computer. I am delighted to report that all the data is intact AND, best of all to this psychology instructor and research, SPSS runs just great!