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
April 11th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
cj2600
Context: 2.5″ 80GB laptop SATA, not work in DELL dsktop, tried Ext Enclosure and internal adapter, help?
Computer steps through “found new drive…”, but NO SHOW in My Computer.
Drive shows up in Device manager, but no Volume info
Press ‘Populate’ button but produce
[TYPE=Dynamic], [Status=Foreign], [Capacity, space…=0]
Drive shows up in Disk Mgr but no volume info.
Drive shows up correctly in external enclosure on laptop ONLY.
Tried other desktops machines, same results, no go
Tried jumpers on all desktop drives, still no go.
Have data on drive, therefore, I cannot format drive.
Comments are invited …
April 9th, 2008 at 9:17 pm
doubledee,
Is it a brand new hard drive? Make sure the hard drive is partitioned and formatted, otherwise it will not appear in My computer, you’ll see it only in Disk Management.
If the hard drive is not new then apparently the file structure is corrupted or the drive is defective.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
Dell laptop drive placed in usb/sata enclosure connected to desk top usb port. I’m not sure why this drive will not appear in My Computer. It shows in computer management but not as a icon in My Computer. I have seem a few with the same problem however no one expains how to fix
April 1st, 2008 at 10:35 pm
You saved my life. I had to scan for viruses sisters laptop without turning on. I didn’t knew how to do that, now I know. Thanks.
March 28th, 2008 at 6:09 pm
ive had a problem with my laptop.The screen has pressure damage and the whole screen has gone white.Is the drive adapter my only solution to get al my documents on to my new computer .
plz write bk . thnks !
February 24th, 2008 at 6:40 am
I moved my desk top computer to a new location. When I plugged it in there ws no power, the light in the back flashes continually, but no power to the computer. I think the power supply is bad. I bought a 3.5″ enclosure and took the hard drive out of the desk top and plugged it into my laptop to retrieve the documents I need. For some reason, I cannot acccess the my documents file. Is there something I need to do so the laptop will see these files? Do I need to do something special to be able to download these files to the laptop one they are found? Both machines have Windows XP
February 22nd, 2008 at 3:34 am
if my laptop hard drive have a damaged file system,will it still work?can i still recover my data in the hard drive?
January 7th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Jill,
That’s right. You can connect SATA laptop hard drive to a desktop computer using same data/power cables as you use for a SATA desktop hard drive.
You connect both SATA and IDE laptop hard drives to the same PC.
1. Connect SATA laptop hard drive using regular desktop cables.
2. Connect IDE laptop hard drive using IDE hard drive adapter.
3. Both hard drive should appear in My Computer and you can transfer data between hard drives. If you want to make an exact copy of the SATA hard drive, you’ll have to use drive ghosting utility witch support SATA drives.
January 7th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Just want to make sure what I read is how it should be understood.
If I have a sata Laptop harddrive-I can use the same cable I use for a sata desktop hard drive….right?
And what if I want to copy a SATA Laptop Harddrive on to an IDE hard drive-is there an adaptor for that?
December 8th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
hi attached my old laptop hard drive to my new laptop using 2.5 enclosure via usb. It initially worked fine but now the drives appear in ‘my computer’ but i cannot access them as the computer insists they need formatting any suggestions?