Hello from Minnesota

[newtusmaximus]

gunnar26, apologies fro not having come back to you sooner; been away..   Thank you "whateverthing" for responding.

[bitsnpcs]

Hello gunnar26,

Welcome to the forum

[whateverthing]

... What name would I be searching for or better yet is it something that can be built from scavenged parts?

@gunnar26  You'd be looking for a "hard drive enclosure," making sure it's the right size and connection type for the drive you have. It makes it easy to attach the drive to a USB port. Like these:
https://www.newegg.com/Hard-Drive-Enclosures/SubCategory/ID-92

Otherwise, if you want try connecting it internally on a working computer, as a secondary drive, you need to make sure the computer has a 2nd available SATA port, then you could use any SATA cable.

[gunnar26]

Thank you all for the welcome!

@newtusmaximus- Thanks for the intriguing suggestion.  I didn’t lose anything I can’t live without, I back up everything in journals (including my posts) and photos to an external drive, however I do love tinkering with “things.”  What name would I be searching for or better yet is it something that can be built from scavenged parts?

[newtusmaximus]

Welcome,
Have you tried using the old hard drive again as via usb.  You can buy inexpensive "cases" to convert old 2.5 inch drives as an external usb drive.  The reason for asking, is that you might be able to recover some of the data from the old hard drive- assuming of course it was not backed up first- as we all should do, but rarely do

[BarryVG]

Welcome from Maine.

[whateverthing]

Welcome @gunnar26 to the world of Linux! And to Linux Lite in particular. Isn't it great to be able to bring life back to equipment you thought was useless and hopeless, and make it 100% useful again? And with freely-shared software!

[TMG1961]

Welcome

[Artim]

Welcome!  I'm like you, pretty spooked by technology... Linux Lite makes it a lot less scary!

[gunnar26]

Hi everyone,
I am a recent windows 10 refugee.  A while back the hard drive on my laptop crashed.  My knee jerk response was to go out and buy a new one.  I had been used to win7 and tolerated it (in a prefect world I wouldn’t own any computer).  I became so disgusted with win10 that I started researching alternatives.  My search led me to the concept of open source software, and Linux Lite specifically, which resonates with me much more than the prevalent consumerist mentality. It also inspired the confidence to go back to my old laptop and resurrect it with a new hard drive (1TB HDD).  I chose Linux Lite as my gateway distro. Everything went smooth and its more responsive than it ever was. So now I have 2 laptops. A couple days ago I decided to keep the new one and put Mint on it as the sole os.   I’m sure I will have many questions from here on out. I’m not a very technology savvy person (for me book, pen, and paper come first).  The terminal especially freaks me out. All that said, I’m happy to be here and hopefully I won’t try your  patience too much.

Thank You Linux Lite team! I may even start enjoying technology now!
-jason