[Nottingham] Viewing a second harddrive

[Martin]

Ron,

Surprised noone has answered yet... It must be the weekend and a bright
sunny day!

On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 11:55:01AM +0000, Ron Wilton via Nottingham wrote:
[...]
> This document could be one one it two drives: a SanDisk solid state drive; or a Western Digital HDD. Both of these drives have a SATA interface. Unfortunately, this computer does not now work; I believe that the processor is at fault.
> I had hoped to use an old Ubuntu computer to read these drives. I have attached the SSD to the SATA and power cables to act as a second harddrive without success. Can anyone advise me on whether what I am doing is possible, and if so, what else do I need to do?
> Thanks.
> 
> Ron

Yep... You can read multiple HDD/SSD disks like that.

Safest is to shut everyting down and ensure the power is off. Then
attach your second drive with power and SATA, boot up, and then...

You need to "mount" the respective partitions from the second drive.

Look for "mount" or "devices" in the menu options for your desktop or
file manager or 'system menu'. You may see something described as
"/dev/sdb1" or "/dev/sdc1" or some such series of numbers, or some name
that describes the partition that you want. (Your host machine should be
using "/dev/sda1" and a few other "/dev/sda..." for its own disk partitions.


Let us know if you're stuck for finding a walk-through.

(Also, for your HDD, ensure that it is firmly placed horizontally or
virtically. Definitely do not try using it whilst 'dangling' on the
cables! There is a fragile spinning disk inside that chunky metal box!)


Good luck and let us know how you get along,

Cheers,
Martin