Discussion on:

Extracting data from a dead laptop with a laptop hard drive adapter

You can also get a USB Hard Drive Enclosure. It comes with the case to put the laptop hard drive in and then all you do is plug it in to your USB port. TigerDirect.com sells it for like $40 bucks. It might be more expensive than the $10 adapter but now you can take the hard drive with you anywhere you want. My 2 cents...

I have a laptop harddrive adapter that I used to recover data from a dead laptop. I purchased the adapter as an inexpensive solution. The USB adapter would allow you to resolve problems with several laptops without continually opening the case on your desktop computer. Also some newer computers don't have the physical space to locate another drive.

I have had good results with Apricorn's EZ gig PCMCIA interface - it's really designed to transfer an entire drive's contents (O/S and all) to a new HDD, but it works just as well for temporary data transfers and extra storage.Bonus: you don't have to bust your knuckles inside a PC case.
http://www.apricorn.com

What about the other way around. Can I connect a hard hard disk from a desktop pc onto a laptop?. If so how???.

Because of the form factor of laptop drives, there just isn't enough room to put a regular IDE drive in a laptop case. There are however many external Hard Drive adapters on the market that connect with either IE1394 or USB standards. As a matter of fact, most exteral hard drives that you purchase are just plain IDE drives mounted in a chasis that will provide a connection and power to the drive, and then connect to a computer with the USB cable. This will not give you a bootable solution since it is very rare to find a bios that will allow you to select a USB device for boot. It is also a draw-back in that you will not have the full portability of the laptop when you use that kind of setup, since you have to have regular power for the external drive. I am not aware of any external drives that also have battery power. Someone else out there might know of something else though. If it is just a matter of needing extra storage space, this is the way to go.

I've ruined 2 hard drives with such an adapter. OK, it's 2 out of 20 maybe but it's still bad.

I would rather go with an USB adapting system.

Upside: it's PNP, no need to take the desktop apart, no reboot and it takes power from USB (even though it comes with a power-from-PS/2 cable).

Downside: USB is a lot slower than IDE.

So, if the 2 were equally safe, it all comes to whether you want speed or convenience (don?t forget to count the desktop take apart time).

But as I said at the beginning: I don?t think that the IDE adapter is quite perfect. Not the 2 I?ve tried, anyways.

Cheers.

2005 delivered two crashed laptop drives: I have not had a real hard drive failure since my IBM AT's CMS drive failed in 1985 (remember?).

When you install the laptop drive in the desktop (excellent article!), resist the temptation to use it, write to it, or error check the drive in a mannner which will write corrections!

Concentrate! Get the information you need off of the drive - right away.

And remember that it is very likely that a dropped laptop may have damaged sectors: the trick, even if you have to work "directory by directory", is to get the data off as soon as possible. Now! Don't even let the drive run.

The last drive I salvaged the data off of was a Toshiba 40BM which had been growling for about 4 months. I thought it was the fan - and didn't figure out the truth until right after I replaced the fan and the growling continued.

As it was, I got the data off of Drive C, and had just finished when Drive C failed completely, letting out a howl.

But it's funny: the partition for Drive D continued to work perfectly; howl and all.

On my new 80MB lap top drive (Comp USA, $129, and a white-labeled Toshiba drive yet again) I have moved all my data to partition for drive D, including setting "My Documents" to drive D as well. Now I can do delta backups to the external USB Hard Drive in one command.

And I have now started taking Ghost backups of Drive C, which I now use exclusively for programs.

Rebuilding your programs can now take days. So it is absolutely necessary to think in terms of being able to restore your programs as quickly as your data files. Making Ghost images is the only way I know how.

And remember to backup your Outlook Express Message Files, and especially our OE Address Files. Right?

And finally - this nostrum (all you young techies). There are two kinds of people.

1: Those who back up their hard drives.
2: Those who have never had a hard drive crash.

rjk
Oyster Bay, NY

PS Once you have lifted everything off the lap top drive, go ahead and error check, defrag, and re-partition etc. to your heart's content. But trust me - it ain't worth it. Either take it apart for fun or chuck it - and get on with life.

I've followed all the instructions, except I can't figure out the jumpers. I have a hitachi hard drive just like the one in the photo. Can someone explain where the jumpers are on this drive.

After my failure on the first attempt, I purchased an USB Hard Drive Enclosure from Best Buy, but had same results... when tried to open it, had the message ?drive is unaccessible?. I rebooted my PC and after then I couldn?t see it any more, even tough the laptop?s HD still made same noises. Any other suggestions please? thanks!

need info

The bottom of the article has a clickable spot to go to page 2. When I click on it I get an error message (web page can't be located). Is this the end of the article or is there more that I can't see?

Hi, great article.

I just had to do the same thing to image a drive using PowerQuest DriveCopy and PartitionMagic.

As the desktop I had to use only had 39 pin cables and I had no 40 pin available I simply moved the extra pin (i.e. bent it) on the adapter out of the way.

The imaging and subsequent restore to a new drive worked perfectly.

Given that these cables are so cheap (I paid 10 Singapore dollars for mine) it's well worth having 2 in your toolbox as well as a spare 40 pin cable to cover all eventualities.

I have now fixed a removable 3.5" drive bay to one of my support machines which makes swapping in laptop drives (or any other drive that requires similar treatment) a breeze.

i was faced with the same problem, i had a cablem with 39 pins, and the laptop needed 40. i briefly thought of removing that pin, but then found a far better solution. ADDING a hold to the connector. it's far less risky modding a 3 dollar cable than a 100.00 hard drive, and snipping or bending pins is never a fun thing to do. about 1 minute later, i had created the necessary hole in the cable with a dremel tool, and voila, worked like a charm.

valis
http://www.valissoft.com

Your HDD must be very old. Most of the HDD I work on these day have that one pin left out.

exp

These adapters are very handy, and I have used them in the past. You need to pay attention to the power leads though...on some models (not the one shown in the article), the power leads are soldered directly to the adapter. In this situation, you need to inspect the connection and the leads prior to EVERY use. I had one of these adapters fry a hard drive because the solder didn't hold the positive lead, and it contacted the negative lead shorting out the adapter and toasting the drive. I no longer use the adapter for imaging laptops, I built a network boot disk (http://www.nu2.nu/bootdisk/network/?PHPSESSID=25ac09f844f3f2f0b77f74f3be488ad0), and access the drive in DOS mode. If you add the NTFSPro software, you can even read NTFS partitions, and copy data off the drive.

I know what you are talking about I got one of these adaptor. I use electrical tape to cover the solder joints.
Actually I got 2 of these in my tool kit you never know when you have to upgrade NB HDD (I just did one on Monday). I put the old and new HDD on my PC and use ghost to copy the image across.

I have had bad experience with 2 drives both NTFS and both set to boot to NT OS in the same machine, when the running OS found the second drive it did not boot.

To fix it I had to remove the second dirve and use Win 98 fdisk /mbr.

We faced the same problem. We are a complete laptop organization, so we used a Drive Link cable supplied with a Hard Drive upgrade purchase. The Drive Link cable uses an available PCMCIA card slot. All you need to do is plug in the PC Card and plug in the drive. If drive doesn't appear, refresh the Device Configuration through Device Manager and your all set. Works great with Fat16, Fat32, and NTFS.

Our organization is based primarily of laptops. Not only do all the users have them, but IT does as well. Although we also have some available desktops and have that IDE converter, it's been much easier to use a PC card adapter from a company called CMS Peripherals. This device simplifies the process by removing the bad laptop HDD, taking off the IDE adapter and sliding on the CMS adapter. Once done, a Windows 2000 machine or higher immediately picks up the HDD and mounts it as a secondary device. You can now browse the device, recover data, run chkdsk applications, etc. It's saved so much time we make sure each our techs has one. Definitely worth checking out!

I bought a converter at CompUSA (got what I deserve, you say?), manufacturer is "FMI," and it's the kind with the power leads soldered right to its little board. I was pleased to find this discussion when my PC refused to see the drive, but even after gaining some confirmation that I wasn't doing anything wrong, no combination of cables, jumpers or anything else could make the BIOS see that a disk was connected to the cable. I don't think the problem has anything to do with the power leads -- I could hear the drive clicking and it got warm -- and I doubt very much that there's anything wrong with this brand new disk from a Dell Inspiron. So I'm thinking the evidence points to this $7 adapter being a POS. But if anyone has any other thoughts . . ..

Having all PCs of the same model (and same chipset) is a good policy as it makes a lot of things easier, especially support, and thus saves money. We buy laptops and desktops in batches, ensuring they are completely identical, and we replace all PCs at the same time + keep some spare ones for future needs in the next 3 years. So if a laptop breaks or has any other hardware problem we just swap the hard drives and the user can walk out with a operating laptop and all his data.

Don't take this the wrong way but your advice is bad. Since the hard drive was dropped it may also have sustained damage and getting the data is the first thing to do.

This article explains one of many choices and IMO contains great info for someone that's not aware of the availability of these handy little connectors. What others have mentioned about possible problems is certainly helpful.

But if the drive is installed into another laptop how would one go about getting the data off of it? I believe this is more of what the article was about.

I am sure it is possible to build a DIY adaptor...if someone shares the pinouts... anyone?

I followed the instructions of G Schultz until I got to Fig G - there were so many "ribbons" inside the thing, I began to use one at a time, the first one I used, when I turned on the system it said "OS not found" - , so I reconnected things correctly, the other "ribbons" were connected to the CD player, and the others were so deep into the box i counld not figure what to do- al "P5" connector shown in the Fig G had four pins (all five of them) and most could notbe removed, I only found one dangling--used that one--no such results-- I did leave the laptop HD in the metal sleeve that was protecting it, as the phillips head screw more more than difficult to remove -- HELP! I need my data and my laptop as my spouse is awaiting a heartransplant and all of the medical data is on it -- once the transfer is accomplished then I will see if it is the motherboard that is broken. Thanking you in advance for any consideration you may be able to give.

I can see the laptop drive connected via the USB/IDE cable, but can't open any of the files. Do I need to copy them to the host computer, or do I have another problem?

My Thinkpad A21m laptop got spoiled. Hard drive is ok but password protected (I needed to type in the password to access the hard drive when my laptop was working). Will the above solution of attaching the hard drive to my desktop work? I know the password to Hard drive. Please reply.
Thanks.

How do I extract data from 100GB Ultra ATA/100 EIDE hard drive ? My laptop hard drive is of the above configuration and it has one set of 44 pins (minus 1) and another separate set of 4 pins.

I followed you advice, BUT trying to avoid opening my desktop, I purchased the kit for USB connection http://www.cablestogo.com/product.asp?cat%5Fid=1501&sku=39994
The laptop HD makes tracking noises; I see the drive on my desktop but can?t open it.
Do you think if I don?t use the USB connection and go directly inside the desktop would it work? Some tells me that my laptop is completely dead and is not going to work! I?m afraid to make more damage to it. Help!

is there a way to do this withjout using a desktop? as in with anothjer laptop?

I got a Laptop hard drive USB adapter from a friend who use it, Transcend brand 2.5.
I had a problem recently with the boot.ini and not able to start windows, still the problem with message load needed DLLs for Kernel.
Today I took out the hard drive from the problem laptop and plug it into the adpater, but can?t see the drive information into another laptop or PC(I?m using cable select jumper), it says that if I want to format the dirve, of course I will not, because I need to backup some personal files. I also can see the drive information from the laptop with the boot ptoblem in DOS mode, but can?t copy my outlook pst file (1gig) to a USB Hard Drive.
Do you have any Idea how I can copy a large file from DOS. and also to copy several file using wildcards, I can{t use neither xcopy or move commands. And Copy Command don{t allows wildcard.
Once I copy at least my pst file, I now will format and reinstall all..

Where can I find an adapter that has a usb connector to a mac computer so I can
download some footage in my HITACHI hard drive?

yuo said to move the jump but I can't find it all my jumps are white plugs but this one looks like it is missing

How can you do it with a external hard drive

How can I do it if I have to extract from my external hard drive instead of a laptop

Is it possible for me to reformat the drive with this after I've removed the data? I'd like to try and re-install it as my primary hard drive

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_________
Jack
Laptop Fanatic

tried it but my computer shuts down whenever i connect the power cable. any ideas?

This is an ANCIENT thread at this point, but...

...I'm actually trying to find the adapter pictured in figure D. It looks like a 2.5" laptop IDE to SATA adapter specifically for laptops. Can't find it ANYWHERE! Anybody know?

Very good article with useful, clearly-written instruction.

You did forget to mention slapping the laptop user for not backing up important data. A small external hard drive would have saved the day for him with no muss, no fuss.