How to connect a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer
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.
Entry Filed under: Laptop Tips and Tricks
84 Responses to “How to connect a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer”
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Pages: « 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 [2] 1 » Show All
July 25th, 2006 at 2:32 pm
Tried that. It still tries to re-boot. Also tried shutting down and having the USB attached when I power up. The desk-top boots fine, then as soon as I try to view the USB drive, it tries to reboot.
July 25th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
Start your computer without the USB HD enclosure attached to it. When it boots to the desktop, connect the enclosure. It should be detected by the OS automatically and you can access the HD inside the enclosure as a regular HDD though My Computer.
July 25th, 2006 at 2:08 pm
I bought an adaptec USB HD enclosure kit for this purpose, but when I plug the drive in to the USB, windows tries to boot from the USB-connected drive, which causes my desktop system to crash. How can I attach the drive without it trying to boot windows?
June 28th, 2006 at 11:42 am
Matty,
I think it’s possible that the laptop hard drive is bad itself. If the drive is spinning but not detected by the OS, most likely the laptop hard drive controller board is bad. That’s would be my first guess. If the hard drive controller board is bad, I don’t think that you would be able to get any data from the drive at home.
June 27th, 2006 at 9:08 pm
I have an emachines e5310 which i’m sending back to the company for repair (overheating problems are abundant).
I bought an IDE adapter to get the data of my laptop hard drive but when I boot it up I get an error message that says there is a problem and i need to boot up using a boot cd.
i tried using my USB enclosure along with the adapter to connect the hard drive but it doesn’t detect the hard drive. I hear the hard drive spinning…. any ideas what the problem could be?
June 11th, 2006 at 11:08 pm
[…] I think that would be the easiest and fastest way to access your data. You can find an external USB enclosure in any computer shop and it would cost you about $20-$30. After you remove the laptop hard drive, place it inside the enclosure and connect to the desktop or another laptop computer via the USB cable. […]
May 21st, 2006 at 11:22 pm
Steve,
I haven’t created a guide for Toshiba Satellite A35 yet, but I can guide you how to access the hard drive. In this model the hard drive is located under the DVD drive. The DVD drive is secured by one screw on the bottom of the laptop. Turn over the laptop and remove a screw above the DVD drive. After that slide the DVD drive away from the laptop and remove it. Under the drive you’ll find the hard drive. There is no cable between the hard drive and the motherboard. The hard drive connects directly to the system board. The hard drive is secured by 4 screws. Remove 4 screws and slide the hard drive away from the system board to disconnect it. Now you can remove the hard drive.
May 21st, 2006 at 11:15 pm
Hey Supernova,
Sorry for a late response. You can connect your laptop SATA HDD directly to the desktop pc. You can use the same cables as for a desktop SATA HDD. With SATA drives you do not need an adapter, connect it directly to the motherboard.
May 21st, 2006 at 7:46 am
Same issue, HD isn’t spinning and CD/DVD won’t rev up after initial 3 second spin.
Unit is a Toshiba Satellite A35-S159.
I didn’t find the disassembly instructions here or anywhere else.
I’m thinking that I need to check the cables to the HD but don’t know how to get to the HD.
May 13th, 2006 at 7:27 pm
Hi!
I want to Connect a Laptop SATA HDD to my DESKTOP PC.
My PC is AMD X2 on MSI Geforce 6510 Mobo,that supports SATA 2 ports.
IS it possible to connect a laptop SAT HDD to desktop SATA ports this way?