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
September 26th, 2008 at 10:52 am
hi i have a hitachi travelstar sata laptop hdd and its totally different from the one in the picture on the top it has 5400 rpm and its 60 gigabites and 21 pins i need help on putting this driver into my computer which is a windows 98 and this one is windows xp froma toshiba satelite pro can you tell me how i can put this in my computer for storage and reading stuff from the hardrive thanks
September 20th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Imran,
You can purchase an external USB enclosure for desktop (3.5″) hard drives. After that you install your hard drive into the enclosure and connect to the laptop via USB cable (included with the enclosure).
September 16th, 2008 at 1:35 am
I would like to connect my Desktop PC Hard disk to my laptop.Is there any cable available for the same as i am not allowed to open laptop case.
I have a dell m4300 laptop.
cable which goes in to usb of laptop and gives to output one for power and another for data.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Dana,
I think you are talking about a .8″ hard drive. Try using this adapter.
July 24th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
This is fine for the 2.5 drives but I am trying to connect one of the Toshiba mini drives that is not quite 2 inches wide. I have been searching for an adapter that works but am having no luck. Any suggestions?
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.