Options for laptop with cracked screen

[MLR5]

This laptop has a cracked screen.  Likely it is not worth the cost of repairing.  Is there another machine I can get whereby I can transplant the hard drive from the old machine into it to preserve the data from the old drive?

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

A replacement screen for your laptop would cost $150 or less perhaps much less. It's the labor to have it done that is quite expensive. You do not need to put the old drive in another laptop to save the data. You can get an adapter to turn the drive from your computer with the broken screen into an external USB device you can potentially store away for years and harvest the data off the driver when you have another working machine you want to use and then transfer data into the new machine via the USB port. 

You would have to get another machine with very similar or identical hardware if you wished to simply stick the old drive in a new computer, boot up and go. 

If you want to try self-repair there are manuals and videos we could link to you, and this would be the kind of adapter if you just want to use the old drive as an external:

https://www.amazon.com/SSK-Aluminum-Enclosure-Adapter-External/dp/B07MNFH1PX/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1L6ZOOR...