Easiest way to get data off a laptop hardrive

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Girlfriends laptop has gone, gpu has melted the soldering to the motherboard over time (a known issue with these laptops).

She has quite a lot of stuff left on the hardrive that i want to pull off - what's the easiest way to do this? The laptop will not turn on, so am i right in assuming open it up, take the hd out and pull the data that way? What interface do laptop drives usually use (laptop was bought about 2 years ago). Would i have to get a caddy?
 
just take the HD out, interface should be sata, but it might be ide if machine was cheap, shouldnt need a caddy unless you dont have power cables and such laying about ;)
 
uhmmm, ive seen someone on youtube doing it that way, if i can remember correctly, all he did was take the hdd from the laptop and use a sata cable to plug it in his pc..please correct me if im wrong.

edit: dohh!! this is what i get for not refreshing
 
If it was bought 2 years ago it will probably be SATA and just plug straight into your mobo.

If it is the older IDE style then you will need a special cable, but you see this less and less these days
 
The hard drive in question contained her Windows Vista install which had a password on. Will this cause any problems when getting the data off?
 
Yup, should be just sata data and power. Password protection does nothing to protect a disk which is not the boot drive (the main reason encryption is needed).
 
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