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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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?
October 5th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Salman,
I did the same mistake a few times before but it didn’t damage the hard drive. Maybe the laptop hard drive was dead before you connected it to the desktop? Does the hard drive start spinning when you connect it to the desktop?
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:21 pm
Hi, I have Dell Latitude D505 dard disk. its connector are same as described above. actually I connected the hard drive by wrong way with ID cable. I mean last pin of hard drive with first pin of IDE cable. when it was not detected I refered on net and found I was wrong. but now it is not detecting either in BIOS or in windows. Did it damage hard drive?.
September 11th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Roselle,
Maybe the desktop is trying to boot from the laptop hard drive? Make sure the boot order is correct in the BIOS.
September 11th, 2007 at 11:03 am
I think I connected it right but after I boot the desktop it was reading but later on black screen and a cursor is there.
September 2nd, 2007 at 8:32 am
my problem is quite opposite.
i salvaged a toshiba laptop with its hdd missing.
i want to connect my desktop’s regular hdd to it.
i think i need to make an adapter which does that.
does any one know any resource on net which shows how to build one .
thanks in advance .
dr.dan