Omg, I love this question, hahaha. 

So this is the tutorial I watched, he explains everything pretty clearly!

I bought 2 things in order to be able to do this properly: 

-This hard drive converter, which was between $20-$25, that I knew would be adaptable with my own laptop’s harddrive. (I researched thoroughly what kind of harddrive my previous laptop had, my laptop was a Dell Inspiron 14R-5421. I also watched this specific tutorial that showed me where the harddrive was located on my laptop, so I didn’t gut the thing completely and somehow damage the laptop or harddrive in any way.)

-This itty-bitty screwdriver kit for $10 was also essential to extracting the harddrive 

I’d like to disclaim that this is not a fool-proof method for everyone. I wasn’t sure what was wrong with my laptop, but I am positive now it was only a motherboard failure, & while I am not really tech savvy I was in a really hard position, because that laptop had all of my artwork archived from the last 10 yrs in it’s harddrive. I had considered many times whether it would be worth it to take it in to have it extracted professionally, but after spending months working to make enough money to buy a completely new laptop (which I was so grateful for the support from everyone who commissioned me or shared my commission posts, it would have been impossible to do with out them!) I didn’t have the energy to try to put away more and more money to have it done. I also had a little bit more confidence in myself to do this on my own, because I fixed my unbalanced washing machine earlier this year just by watching a youtube tutorial. lol 

IN CONCLUSION, if you are a desperate, broke-ass bitch this method may work for you, and it will definitely save you around $100 or more if you decide to do it on your own. If you can spare the money and all of this completely confuses you, DON’T DO IT ON YOUR OWN. At the very least if you’re completely against taking your laptop in to like Geek Squad or something, try to see if you have any computer nerds in your family who could potentially help you. 

If you find you have enough confidence to do this on your own, I commend you (it wasn’t that hard after doing enough research) I was filled with overwhelming happiness that I was able to save all of my data for only around $30-$40. I am also able to use the extracted harddrive as an external harddrive now so I have all the data on my new laptop backed up on this older harddrive.