Hi troops, I'm trying to get photos files from my dad's old HDDs. We no longer have access to any old PCs to acutally plug them in, so I was wondering if you could point me to some sort of USB converter that would allow me to grab files from them. My cousin has a PC but it's a newer model with more up to date connection to HDD/SSD. Disks in question:
Many thanks! D
From the pictures you posted in the comments, I can tell that you have two SATA drives and one IDE drive.
Here's a combo option that'll do both types of drives. I have no experience with this particular model, but it's what I would buy in your situation.
Hard Drive Docking Station, Tccmebius TCC-S868-US USB 3.0 to 2.5 3.5 Inch SATA IDE Dual Slots External HDD Enclosure, for 2.5" 3.5" IDE SATA I/II/III HDD SSD https://a.co/d/3tsrGon
IDE Drives can be slightly more complicated than SATA, So if you're having trouble with the IDE drive, Read the drive dock manual carefully because sometimes those docks will require a certain setting on the drive.
The SATA drives though are super simple. Plug in your dock, plug the drive into the dock, turn the dock on, and the drive should just show up on the computer.
IMPORTANT: IF YOU SEE SOMETHING THAT SAYS THE DRIVE MUST BE FORMATTED IN ORDER TO BE USED, DO NOT FORMAT IT
Formatting it will erase the data, if the computer is trying to prompt you to format the drive either the data has been corrupted and is already lost, or it's not being mounted correctly. Possibly because the drive is in a format that your computer does not recognize. There are things you can do if this happens to you, but I'm not going to go into the details of that now. You'll most likely not have to worry about that and if you do, you can come back and ask for additional help then.
Thank you so much for this extremely comprehensive answer!
This is exactly what I did