To connect a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer you have to use a Laptop IDE Hard Drive Adapter. You can easily find this adapter on the Internet for $10-$15. This adapter is very handy if you want to scan a laptop hard drive for viruses and spyware using antivirus software installed on a desktop PC, transfer data from a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer or create a ghost image from one hard drive to another. I also use this adapter if a laptop hard drive has failed and I have to recover data from it.
When you connect a laptop IDE adapter, a desktop IDE cable and a laptop hard drive to each other, make sure to connect pin 1 on the hard drive, pin 1 on the desktop IDE cable to pin 1 on the adapter. On a desktop IDE cable the side painted in red goes to pin 1.
On a laptop hard drive there are 2 groups of pins. One group has 43 pins and the other has 4 pins. The pin 1 is located on the side closer to the group of 4 pins.
After you’ve assembled everything together, connect the IDE cable to a desktop PC. Connect it to a free IDE connector on the system board. When you start the computer, you should see the laptop drive in BIOS and in Windows. You can treat this drive as a regular hard drive.
In the next post I explain how to access data using an external USB enclosure.
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May 19th, 2013 at 11:20 am
@ compaq presario,
I would test the laptop hard drive and memory first. It’s possible one of them failing.
May 13th, 2013 at 10:14 am
Laptop is not rebooting.on screen message showing that Press to resume, to setup.but none of key does not work from keypad.disply freeze
March 4th, 2013 at 12:59 pm
I received one of these IDE laptop to PC adapter, but I cannot tell which way the power leads go (the red and black wires connect both ways). How can I tell which wire goes to which pin? I am afraid if they are switched I will fry the drive. Thanks.
April 17th, 2012 at 12:39 am
I like PC games too much especially truck driving games. but my laptop does not support most of the games. is there any changes i can do to the laptop just to play them? if which site will be helpfull?
March 2nd, 2012 at 2:59 pm
@ kuks,
1. Remove the battery.
2. Do not turn it on.
3. Disassemble the laptop to inspect the damage.
http://www.laptoprepair101.com.....uid-spill/
February 21st, 2012 at 11:21 pm
what cn i do,i left my laptop behind my car trunk
and found it all wet,when i removed the laptop out
of the bag,water was just droping down,its like the
rain where entering the trunk,nw what first step should i take?
January 6th, 2012 at 3:58 pm
Noob,
Sure you can.
I believe Dell XPS Studio 1640 laptop uses a regular 2.5″ SATA hard drive.
If you have SATA ports available on your desktop, you can plug the 2.5″ laptop hard drive directly into those ports.
You just have to buy a 2.5″ to 3.5″ mounting bracket to secure the laptop hard drive inside your PC, that’s it.
January 6th, 2012 at 3:45 pm
Is there any way I can remove a hard drive from a laptop and use it as an internal hard drive for my desktop? The laptop in question is the Dell XPS Studio 1640. My screen broke a couple of months ago and I just got a new desktop, I was wondering if it would be possible to remove my laptop hard drive and use it as an extra hard drive on my PC?
November 11th, 2011 at 10:17 am
@ justimzera,
HP Pavilion dv6000 series notebooks has a known issue with the graphics card failure. Most likely your laptop doesn’t boot because of failed graphics card.
If you have nothing to lose, you can try this method to fix the graphics chip:
http://www.laptoprepair101.com.....hics-chip/
Yes, you can. You can remove the hard drive and use an external USB adapter to hook up your hard drive to another PC or laptop.
You’ll need an external SATA hard drive enclosure for 2.5″ notebook drives.
Take a look at the following guide. It explains how to do it step by step:
http://www.insidemylaptop.com/.....en-laptop/
November 10th, 2011 at 9:31 pm
i have a hp pavilion 6000 laptop. it wont turn on. all it does is start up for literally a second then shuts down and continues to repeat that process until i fully take out the battery. is there any way i can just remove mmy hard drive and use an adapter of soe sort to hook up to another laptop? if so, could you tell me how and where to get this adapter? please email me