Need advice about extracting data from a 20 year old hard drive

[NootyMcNootNoot]

I am new to building pcs will soon be able to build my first PC (just waiting for some parts). Recently, my parents brought out their old, broken, 20 year old pc. Even though it didn't work, they kept it because the hard drive contained some pictures they want. I just wanted to know if it would be safe/possible for me to plug the old hard drive into my new PC.

Some things to note are:
The old PC ran on windows xp whilst the new one will obviously use windows 10 
The Hard drive has not been touched in at least 15 years
I do not know if the hard drive even works

I don't know the specs/model of the hard drive

Please help if you can, thanks.

[emosun]

it'll be IDE if it's 20 years ago so just get an IDE to usb dock pop it in and see if it works.

[emosun]

3 minutes ago, NootyMcNootNoot said:

Even though it didn't work, they kept it because the hard drive contained some pictures they want.

also keep in mind the hdd might have died 15 years ago

[cacoe]

If it's SATA, plug it in and hope for the best, if it's IDE, you'll probably need to buy an IDE to SATA adapter. Other than the drive being potentially being broken, there shouldn't really be any other obstacles. 

[RageTester]

2 minutes ago, cacoe said:

If it's SATA, plug it in and hope for the best, if it's IDE, you'll probably need to buy an IDE to SATA adapter. Other than the drive being potentially being broken, there shouldn't really be any other obstacles. 

With IDE to SATA you still have to mess with power delivery. USB adapter on the other hand will deliver everything over 1 cable. And you don't have to mess with anything inside PC at all.

[cacoe]

2 minutes ago, RageTester said:

With IDE to SATA you still have to mess with power delivery. USB adapter on the other hand will deliver everything over 1 cable. And you don't have to mess with anything inside PC at all.

If by mess around, you mean plug in a molex cable, I agree. If it is just for the one off data transfer, an external dock is the best bet. Wouldn't suggest using it long term anyway.

[emosun]

3 minutes ago, RageTester said:

With IDE to SATA you still have to mess with power delivery. USB adapter on the other hand will deliver everything over 1 cable. And you don't have to mess with anything inside PC at all.

no a usb adapter has a separate power cable. you don't get 12v over a usb connection.

[cacoe]

I just mentioned the adapter because it's cheaper and still relatively low hassle, a usb dock is still reasonably cheap though.

[Donut417]

45 minutes ago, NootyMcNootNoot said:

Please help if you can, thanks.

I have a SATA/IDE to USB cable. It came with an external power supply to power drives. I would look at investing in one of those. You never known when you need to test an old drive and that cable makes it easy. 

[Wh0_Am_1]

Welcome to the LTT forums! Well assuming that you have already tried all that was listed above and the drive does not work, you will need to ask your parents how much they value their data, because even if the drive does not work the data is still recoverable, but it won't necessarily be cheap. When it comes to this the company that is usually recommended is Drive Savers. But unless said computer has been abused the drive is likely still operable, I have multiple computers with ancient drives that still work that have been used semi regularly. The computer with oldest drive is an ancient 2004 Dell laptop that I have kicking around for games such as CIV 2 and NFS 4 with the original 17 year old drive, other wise the computer with the most used ancient drive is my backup desktop that is still running a 14 year old HDD and I've used this drive hard for over 6 years (and even dropped it a couple times) honestly the only drives I have had to replace so far are some old drives in a 2011 imac for family, that drive only died 'cause Apple cooked it alive with it's horrific cooling.

[LWM723]

What about the master\slave jumpers on the ide drive?

[cacoe]

51 minutes ago, LWM723 said:

What about the master\slave jumpers on the ide drive?

I've never used an IDE adapter but I'm guessing it wouldn't matter, but I'd set it to master.

[emosun]

2 hours ago, LWM723 said:

What about the master\slave jumpers on the ide drive?

it's a single drive , you dont have to set it