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Need Help With Laptop Hard Drive

Tags:
  • Laptops
  • Hard Drives
  • Display
  • Windows XP
Last response: in Storage
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September 17, 2014 7:07:01 AM

So I'm trying to help out a friend who has a laptop that has either XP or Vista (Knowing my luck its XP). The laptop turns on but the display stays black. He wants to recover his family pictures from the hard drive. So I'm wondering if I can't get the display to work would I be able to hook up the laptop hard drive to my Win 7 desktop to retrieve the photos? I will list the make/model of the laptop as soon as I get out of work if it'll help. Another option to try is to see if the laptop has a secondary display output (VGA more than likely) and hook it up to a moniter to retrieve the files that way.

More about : laptop hard drive

September 17, 2014 7:10:45 AM

Laptop hard drives are typically 2.5" hard drives with otherwise standard power/sata connections. You will be able to connect this internally in your desktop.

To do it properly you would need a 2.5" drive bay, or an adapter, but as a termporary solution you *could* duct tape the drive down strongly in a 3.5" bay... You just don't want it to be able to move around, as a spinning drive does vibrate.
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September 17, 2014 7:15:58 AM

If you do this more than once, I recommend one of these. USB and eSATA. Can be used for any kind of disk cloning or recovery.
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September 17, 2014 7:18:28 AM

bluejayek said:
Laptop hard drives are typically 2.5" hard drives with otherwise standard power/sata connections. You will be able to connect this internally in your desktop.

To do it properly you would need a 2.5" drive bay, or an adapter, but as a termporary solution you *could* duct tape the drive down strongly in a 3.5" bay... You just don't want it to be able to move around, as a spinning drive does vibrate.


Would there be any software issues using Win 7 desktop to access a Win XP hard drive?
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Best solution

September 17, 2014 7:18:59 AM

If it is a SATA drive, you can just plug it into your motherboard, and lay it somewhere in the case long enough to retrieve the data. If it is old, it might be an IDE drive, and things get much more difficult. You'll need a 2.5" to 3.5" cable adapter, an IDE cable, and an IDE controller on the motherboard you want to hook it to. And those adapters are tricky to hook up - get it wrong, and something is going to fry.
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September 17, 2014 7:25:24 AM

mgilbert said:
If it is a SATA drive, you can just plug it into your motherboard, and lay it somewhere in the case long enough to retrieve the data. If it is old, it might be an IDE drive, and things get much more difficult. You'll need a 2.5" to 3.5" cable adapter, an IDE cable, and an IDE controller on the motherboard you want to hook it to. And those adapters are tricky to hook up - get it wrong, and something is going to fry.


I do have another desktop that uses a IDE connection for the disk drive that I should probably be able to use.
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