Can you transfer files from an old PC hard drive to an external hard drive?

Do you have an old Windows XP computer and there’s data on its hard drive that I need to keep? Are you wondering if you can turn that old drive into an external hard drive to retrieve the data, or is it more complicated than that?

You may have been told that the hard drive in that computer is still working but the rest of the machine is dead. If you’re hoping to retrieve some important files on it, this blog might be the perfect solution to your problem!

So the simple answer is as long as the old hard drive is still working you can easily convert it into an external USB hard drive. It isn’t difficult at all.

The great thing about modern versions of Windows is the way you can plug a USB drive into an open port and get right to work without having to configure anything.

If the drive is in an old XP machine, so possibly an IDE drive. But even if it happens to be a SATA drive, you can get a cheap SATA/IDE to USB adapter and that will let you plug the drive into your computer’s USB port and retrieve the files you need from the old drive.

Windows should recognize the drive automatically, and you should see it as a new drive in File Explorer. And just like that you’ll be able to retrieve your files from hard drive and save them onto a new pc or store to a pc and then transfer to another hard drive!