Laptop Hard drive with no laptop?

[asheng]

My leptop has stopped working (power supply is broken). But i need to get some data from the hard drive. Is there anyway I can do this with a desktop? I can olso get my hands on another Laptop could i just plug the hard drive into it and then what would i do?
Thanks
Ashley

 

[8humhum8]

sure u can plug in ur drive into a laptop, only if a laptop is from a different manufacturer it might not work (but it should). you cant plug it into a pc though.

if u find a laptop, ud have to open it up, setup the drive, then setup settings on bios if needed (although it should be on auto select and all). be sure to set the master/slave settings the same as the drive you remove. i.e. if the drive u take out is cable select, then what u install should be cs too.

 

[edfair]

If it is a standard laptop hard drive it can be used in other systems by use of a 2.5 to 3.5 hard drive adapter kit.
With it installed in the adapter kit you can install it like any other IDE drive except it probably should be on an IDE channel by itself.

Swapping it into another laptop can bring on major problems since there may be driver differences that the system can't resolve. Depending on OS I would expect DOS at 100% probablility of working but with glitches to XP 0% with anything between scaling between the two.

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[diogenes10]

There is a converter kit that you can get which consists of a circuit board with a 2.5" connector and a 3.5" connector and power pigtail. This enables you to connect the laptop drive to the desktop computer. It's usually in a kit with mounting rails, screws, etc.
You can look for them at your computer store or on-line auctions.

The bios settings and capabilities of the other laptop would have some bearing on whether or not the drive would be recognized in another laptop.

My guess is that it would be easier to use a converter kit and get the desktop to recognize the drive.