So a friend of mine's hard drive recently went kaput, not sure if it is actual damage to the drive or if it is software malfunction (maybe even the OS) but anyway I'm hoping I can help them out. I have a desktop with available hard drive slots, and extra SATA cables. I could just rip that thing from their computer, throw it in mine and at least get a better diagnostic of the problem right? And that won't/shouldn't cause issues for my computer or the hard drive, right? Will I need any special software (hopefully freeware) in order to check it out or will windows explorer and whatnot be enough to tell me whether this is a simple problem I can fix or if it's all fucky?

You can just get an encloser or a SATA to USB cable. They sell them cheap, I use it all the time at work when a laptop dies just pop the hard drive out, put in the enclosure , plug into USB port and it turns into an external drive to pull all the files off of it. But yeah you can do what you are saying as well if you don't have to do it that often. If you see the files and can pull them off fine, than the HD is probably fine. You could also run a HD diag test if you really wanted too, Ultimate Boot CD has a few of them on there.

This post was edited by valco24 on Mar 24 2017 08:46am

Yeah, you can have a look at it, in your comp...assuming it's not infected.
Just make sure that you are "booting" from YOUR drive, when you turn the comp on.

The free program CrystalDiskInfo will tell you at the top left, if the drive is GOOD or not. http://crystalmark.info/download/index-e.html <--- get the Standard Edition ..... portable (zip) version.