Access a hard disk from a DELL from a laptop

Good morning / afternoon to all:

I have never done this myself so this is a rookie kind of question.

I have a DELL Desktop from a friend (with its keyboard, no monitor). I also have my own laptop. My goal is to back up the personal data, ether in my external drive or DVDs. The connections that we have in the desktop do not include HDMIs, but it does have USB ports. There is a VGA connection, so I turned on the desktop and tried to connect it to my laptop via a VGA cable I have but I was not able to see the hard drive from the desktop. I have not tried to use a LAN cable yet. At the end, I tried to connect the desktop to my TV because I also have a VGA port on it; however, it was not working either. I am not sure if that video card is working properly ...

I feel I am throwing punches to the air: what I should do to be able to do this?

TIA,
Peter Vidal

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