Hmm, that's a bargain.  

For rescuing files from PCs that won't boot, I generally just use knoppix.
 Most machines around here will boot it fine, then I can xfer files to a
USB memory stick, or connect to an FTP server with Konqueror, and you can
just drag and drop files and folders from the hard drive to the FTP
server.  (Our student file server is set up as an FTP server, too, so
students can access their files from home, albeit in a not particularly
secure fashion).    By  using the account of the kid who's files I'm
rescuing to connect to the FTP server and dragging the files there, I'm
putting them where the kid should have put them in the first place!

Knoppix does need 128 meg to load KDE, so it's not a good solution for our
very oldest machines.


School Information Technology Discussion <[log in to unmask]> on
Saturday, April 01, 2006 at 9:27 AM +0000 wrote:
>Dear List:
>
>I have recently bought and fell in love with a USB to IDE adapter. In
>this case I had a staff personal machine, where the computer was dead
>(wouldn't get past login winXPH with 100s of posible solutions) and all
>they cared about were their pictures (no backups). So this device enabled
>me to crack the case on her machine, but leaved the HDD in place and have
>it show up as an external drive on my machine. I was able to search the
>drive copy obver the pictures to burn to CD. Now the machine can have
>winXPH reinstalled and there is no worry of loss of the data.
>
>It was about $12 from Acortech and well worth the money already.
>
>R. 
>