I’ve got a couple of hard drives from an oldish PC which I’d like to get the info off or use as an external drive. One of them started out as an external drive but the housing failed so I mounted it inside the PC and it worked fine as another hard drive. Both have SATA connections and I bought a SATA to usb cable but it doesn’t work. Not sure if I should have some sort of power supply maybe? Any advice welcome thanks.

Get a SATA external caddy.

Something like this?

I think caddy was the word I was looking for when googling. Thanks.

Yes, something like that should work

Ok thanks.

I bought a SATA to usb cable but it doesn’t work.

you’ll almost certainly need external power.

Yes I thought that but the description seemed to suggest not, ie that it was powered by the USB. Certainly nothing makes any noise like it’s powered up when you plug it in.

Can’t you just temporarily plumb it in like this, but obvs using SATA data/power instead of IDE/Molex…?