Can I take my old harddrive (internal) and hook it externally to new cpu without formatting to transfer data?

Question

I have some pictures and a couple movies on an old crapped out cpu, and I was just wondering if its possible to put the HD in an external case setup and plug it into my new cpu in order to get the data off of it, or would I HAVE to format it, leading to all that data lost? So in essance, is it feesable to do that for a plug-n-play for the information?
My old harddrive is off of a SONY PCV-RZ34G, and my new cpu is an HP Pavillion a1230n.

Answer 1

There are several ways of going about doing what you wish to do.
There are multiple caddies out there for both IDE and SATA drives as well as Quick connect cables all of which you can use to make an external HDD into a USB 2.0 Drive.
Most are available at Comp USA or other specialty stores, while you'll likely find lower pricing on E-bay or at New Egg
The only thing you may want to do if any of the information has been secured is to "take ownership" of the files prior to transfer.
This will save a good number of headaches later when you decide you don't need something and try to delete it.
Below are a couple links to products at new egg that look promising.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817155302R

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817366010R

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817155501R

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812119017

The last product is good because you can quickly switch external IDE drives as well as notebook drives

Finally if you are unsure which type of drive you have you can go with something like this

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812882001

Answer 2

Yes get a external hard drive enclosure, most computer stores carry them, it will turn your old internal hard drive into a USB external one.