2.5To 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.

Laptop IDE Adapter Pin Layout

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.

Laptop Hard Drive Pin Layout

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.

Laptop IDE Adapter Connected

 

In the next post I explain how to access data using an external USB enclosure.

 

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118 Responses to “How to connect a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer”

Pages: [12] 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 » Show All

  1. 118
    Rsa Says:

    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?

  2. 117
    cj2600 Says:

    @ kuks,

    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?

    1. Remove the battery.
    2. Do not turn it on.
    3. Disassemble the laptop to inspect the damage.

    http://www.laptoprepair101.com.....uid-spill/

  3. 116
    kuks Says:

    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?

  4. 115
    cj2600 Says:

    Noob,

    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?

    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.

  5. 114
    Noob Says:

    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?

  6. 113
    cj2600 Says:

    @ justimzera,

    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.

    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/

    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?

    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/

  7. 112
    justinzera Says:

    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

  8. 111
    matsia louies Says:

    i got a laptop harddriver i want to put in my computer so i want to buy a adapter,were can i buy it @ nelspuit/mpumalanga/south africa,please

  9. 110
    sanjay rajput Says:

    I have one laptop model:-acer 5738 which have problem like this:-

    when I plugin the charger then it is automatically power on but it is not on or off with the laptop power on/off switch.sometimes it is not start. sometimes when I remove the cmosbettery it is automatically power on .

    so please give me the suggestion for above problem,I wait for your positive reply…….

  10. 109
    Ibkhar Says:

    My hard drive couldnt read anymore i got a lts of important files,what should i do to recover all my files,there is a possible way to retrive all data/files again? Really very sad coz all files saved really needed and important to my life. Thanks Ibkhar

Pages: [12] 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21 » Show All

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