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.
If you find this article useful, please consider making a donation to the author. Thank you!
July 12th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
Alan Tuthill,
I don’t think that you can damage the hard drive by connecting it backwards. I’ve done it a few times myself and didn’t have any problem.
Yes, that’s how it was marked on my hard drive. If you have a different pin layout, you still have to match the pin#1 on the hard drive with the hole#1 on the adapter.
July 12th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
Interesting article but I have a couple of questions. First, you state that pin 1 on the laptop drive is closer to the group of 4 pins but on the Toshiba drive from my Compaq it is marked at the other end and I have already tried it that way but the drive will not power up. Have I damaged the drive?
I also took out the middle locating pin from the PC end which I will put back
April 22nd, 2007 at 3:21 pm
EL,
You can connect the desktop hard drive to your laptop via an external USB enclosure. You can do that in order to access the data on the desktop hard drive if the desktop computer is broken.
But you cannot use the desktop hard drive INSTEAD OF the laptop drive.
April 17th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
[...] My previous post explains how to connect a notebook hard drive to a desktop PC via IDE hard drive adapter. [...]
April 15th, 2007 at 6:20 am
Is it possible for me to use a desktop hard drive for my laptop drive?
April 11th, 2007 at 8:23 am
It actually uses just one usb for the power source and there are no other power options for either the drive, or Device.
It shows up under computer managent,but only under device driver. Under Storage Devices, etc, I dont see any sort of way to access the drive even though it is consistently spinning.
The strange thing is the other drives i was able to access last week wont even boot up now. Very weird.
I guess this is what my last question is. Even if the drive is corrupt, there HAS to be a way within reason to copy it somewhere. would it be a hardware device? Software program ilke Partitian Magic? there is only about 12 gigs of info on the drive.
I am just trying to figure this out. Thanks again for your help.
April 7th, 2007 at 11:54 am
Hey Jack,
I’m not sure why this drive will not appear in My Computer.
If the Fujitsu drive has any jumpers, remove them and try again. Make sure the drive is getting enough power. I don’t know witch model of the external enclosure you got, but if it has two USB cables on one end, make sure both of them are connected to the laptop. Sometimes the power you are getting from one USB port is not enough to start the hard drive.
Try connecting the same Fujitsu drive to another working computer, it might be some kind of compatibility issue between the enclosure, hard drive and computer.
Take a look at the Fujitsu drive in the disk management (computer management in the administrative tools). Does the drive has valid file system? Maybe the file system is corrupted and that’s why the drive is invisible in My Computer?
April 5th, 2007 at 11:06 am
I read the previous posts and “julie” seemed to have a similar problem with the drive showing up in the device manager, but not under her “my computer” icon.
She never came back to explain what happened or if she fixed it. Considering 2 out of 3 hard drives worked fine……..and the 3rd hard drive is at least spinning and recognized in the device manager, is there another way to access the files on it?
Any advice greatly appreciated.
April 4th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
thanks for the advice. I went and go tthe device and was able to get into two out of 3. Unfortunately the one i couldnt get into, is the one that I bought the device for.
It is clearly recognized as a “fugitsu” mass storage device on my task bar, and as an extra drive in my device manager. For some reason, it doesnt show up as an extra drive under the mycomputer icon.
It is definately turned on, and sounds just like the rest that were able to boot up and be accessed without a hitch. Any advice on alternate routes on how to get into this thing, or get my computer to recognize it more? It seems like its recognized………but only as a ghost.
I would even copy and paste the whole thing if i could just find a way to interact with it outside of the device manager.
April 4th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Jack,
It shouldn’t be a problem either. You can use an external notebook hard drive USB enclosure, you can find it online or in a local computer store for $20-30.
Install your hard drive into the external enclosure and connect it to any working laptop (or desktop) via USB port (the USB cable should be included with the enclosure). If there is nothing wrong with the hard drive and the laptop is running Windows 2000 or higher, the external hard drive should be detected automatically. You can access it through My Computer and transfer all needed files.