If for some reason your notebook fails to boot and you need to access data on the hard drive (I assume there is nothing wrong with the hard drive itself), you can use an external USB enclosure. This method is very simple and could be very useful when you need an emergency access to your data on the hard drive.
First of all you’ll have to buy an external USB enclosure for notebook hard drives. These enclosures are inexpensive and usually you can buy them in any local computer store. You also can find a wide variety of external enclosures on the Internet. Make sure to buy a correct one, enclosures for ATA and SATA hard drives are different (the connector inside the case will be different). Usually the enclosure includes the case and the USB cables.
Now remove the hard drive from the laptop. For this example I’m using an ATA hard drive.
Open up the enclosure case and connect the hard drive to the connector inside. After that insert the hard drive into the case.
After everything is assembled, you are ready to connect this device to any working computer (notebook or PC). The enclosure cable usually has two USB connectors on one end, make sure both of them are connected to the computer. You don’t need any external power supply for the enclosure because the hard drive gets power through USB ports. If the computer you are connecting the enclosure to runs Windows 2000 or higher, you will not need any device drivers. As soon as you connect the enclosure to the computer, the external hard drive should be detected and recognized automatically. After that the external hard drive will appear in My Computer and you can access it as any other hard drive in the computer.
If you are getting “Access denied” message when you are trying to access your files on the hard drive, you’ll have to take ownership of a file or folder.
My previous post explains how to connect a notebook hard drive to a desktop PC via IDE hard drive adapter.
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June 22nd, 2008 at 11:08 am
I am having similar issues. My Dell laptop crashed earlier this week giving me a “No boot sector of hard drive,” message when I tried to reboot after receiving the blue screen of death. After reading similar forums, I purchased a USB adapter for my old HD. I’ve attached the HD to another functioning laptop via the USB, but it is not listed under “My computer.” Actually tried this with 2 different computers- one with vista and one with xp. Again, after visiting other forums, I went to the Disk management section and “initialized” the drive, however, I still cannot find it anywhere else on the computer to access the files. As well as being listed under Drive maint, it’s also listed when I select to “safely remove hardware.” I’m not the most computer savvy person but was hoping to save myself the $100 I was quoted for professional data retrieving service. However, after wasting most of my weekend toying with it, I’m starting to think shelling out the cash may be easier. This is my last ditch effort. Any suggestions on how to access the data on the drive?
2 other quick points: 1) I hear the drive spinning when connected and 2)there are 4 other prongs on the HD which are not encorporated into the adapter, could that be a problem?
June 5th, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Kenn Johnston,
DO NOT DELETE THE PARTITION, it will make the data recovery process even harder.
If the hard drive will not show up in My Computer, apparently the file structure on the drive is corrupted. You’ll have to use data recovery software.
You can try this data recovery software. I haven’t tried it myself yet, but it’s free.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
Jeff,
ATA hard drives have two rows of pins as you can see on one of the picture above. SATA hard drives have two flat connectors.
June 5th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
I am also hoping to recover files from a dead laptop. The computer acknoledges the USB device, hard disc device but the drove does not show up in My Computer. It does show up in Disc Manager as Active and Healthy, but with no associated drive letters. Right clicking on the drive in disc manager the only availiable option is “remove this partition.” Will selecting that option that delete my data?
Also, can I boot another laptop directly from the USB HD/enclosure?
May 24th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I removed a 60.0 GB Fujistu hard drive from my laptop..
How do I know if it’s SATA or ATA or whatever (so I can buy the right enclosure)?
May 18th, 2008 at 8:59 pm
SR,
Apparently the drive is damaged badly. I think you’ll have to take it to a professional data recovery specialist.
May 18th, 2008 at 11:45 am
My toshiba satellite laptop is no longer bootable and I needed to recover data from the hard drive. I bought an USB 2.0 enclosure and followed the steps as mentioned above. Once the USB cable is connected to a desktop running Windows XP, I can see an additional drive listed in the explorer. However, I cannot seem to access this drive. When I click on it, my whole system freezes and the CPU utilization spikes upto 100%. Even after leaving the system in that state for over an hour, I still cannot access the laptop drive.
Any idea whats going on ? The laptop drive is abt 80GB.
April 19th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
yebs,
I’m not sure what you are asking about. If you receive “Operating system not found” message on startup, try reinstalling OS from the recovery disc. Reinstalling OS will erase everything on the hard drive. Before reinstalling OS you can make a backup using external USB enclosure.
April 17th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
“Operating system not found” on my acer aspire 4520 setup. how to install operating system on hdd using external USB enclosure? Please teach me, thanks!!
April 9th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
Jack,
If your laptop can handle 20GB hard drive, most likely it will handle 100GB hard drive without any problem.
You can safe all personal files (pictures, music, documents, etc…) on the external hard drive and use them on multiple computers, just connect this drive to any computer using USB cable and access it through My Computer. The external hard drive is very handy if you use more then one computer.