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Reader for old internal laptop hard drives...?

Tags:
  • Laptops
  • Mac OS X
  • Hard Drives
Last response: in Mac Os X
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September 3, 2014 11:25:43 PM

I am trying to figure out what kind of device / reader I need in order to access the hard drives of some old dead laptops of mine.

An example is the hard drive for the IBM Thinkpad T20.

I believe this is a link for that specific hard drive:

http://www.amazon.com/160GB-Hard-Drive-IBM-ThinkPad/dp/...

Though I stand to be corrected.

Will one reader generally serve most laptop hard drives from this era?

Thank you.

More about : reader internal laptop hard drives

a b D Laptop
September 3, 2014 11:34:20 PM

USB to 2.5" IDE cables are pretty cheap. And yeah, they'll do most laptop drives from that era.
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September 3, 2014 11:45:21 PM

Someone Somewhere said:
USB to 2.5" IDE cables are pretty cheap. And yeah, they'll do most laptop drives from that era.


Thanks for the reply. Will I need to power up the hard drive independently with another cable / device, or will that be taken care of by the USB to 2.5 cable?
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Related resources
September 3, 2014 11:53:56 PM

Ought to be powered by the USB bus but not guaranteed. Depends on how the adapter is designed
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a b D Laptop
September 3, 2014 11:58:02 PM

2.5" IDE drives were powered through the IDE connector, so AFAIK they should all power it directly from the USB port.
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September 4, 2014 5:28:26 AM

Someone Somewhere said:
2.5" IDE drives were powered through the IDE connector, so AFAIK they should all power it directly from the USB port.


So I removed the internal hard drives from two old laptops, and the parts where they attach for data retrieval is completely different.

It looks like basically the difference between ATA and SATA in a 3.5" external drive.

Did they have the same technology changeover for laptop hard drives?
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a b D Laptop
September 4, 2014 6:03:10 AM

Yes.
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