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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July 20th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
William,
Yes, these 4 pins are for jumpers, so you can set the drive as Master or Slave.
Different drives have different pin-out.
July 20th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Matt,
If it’s a brand new hard drive most likely you cannot see it in My Computer because it’s not partitioned and formatted.
Access this external hard drive through the Windows Disc Management utility.
Go to Start menu, right click on My Computer, click on Manage and then go to Disk Management.
Find your new hard drive. Create a partition and format the drive.
July 17th, 2008 at 10:52 am
I have a lap top hard drive which came as an external hard drive in an enclosesure but now when i plug it into the USB port it does not get recognised. I can feel it spining up inside but pc shows nothing connected when i go to ‘my computer’.
June 21st, 2008 at 5:44 am
Thanks so much for the pictures. They really helped!
Best,
Christopher
April 13th, 2008 at 1:46 am
This is about the 4th site I’ve located that has a sentence like:
> 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.
This is great, but I’m a bit frustrated…what are the 4 pins? I’m
assuming they are for the jumpers, but I haven’t found a pin-out yet.
Please, when writing documents like this, include such information.
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 !