Want to put my dead laptop's hdd into desktop, what do I need?

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smoothrunes

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Nov 29, 2014
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Basically my laptop of 5+ years kicked the bucket when it met with an unfortunate accident involving some water spillage. Luckily, the hard drive appears fine and unaffected, but there's a lot of data on it I would like to be able to salvage. The lappy HDD is a Hitachi 5K750-750 SATA 3.0. My desktop's MOBO is an Asus Z97-A. So what I'm wondering is what method should I about getting my data back, and what equipment is needed to do so.
 
Solution
USAFRet


A 5 year old laptop drive is a regular SATA drive.
Most likely, your case already has a dedicated 2.5" mount point. All you should need is another SATA data cable, and a free SATA power connection off your PSU.

The laptop drive will simply be seen as a secondary drive and drive letter.
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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A 5 year old laptop drive is a regular SATA drive.
Most likely, your case already has a dedicated 2.5" mount point. All you should need is another SATA data cable, and a free SATA power connection off your PSU.

The laptop drive will simply be seen as a secondary drive and drive letter.
 
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Solution
R_1

R_1

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Sep 8, 2015
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equipment needed:
working PC
Laptop drive
SATA cable

step 1 remove the hard drive from laptop, instructions vary - check your manual
step 2 open computer
step 3 plug laptop hdd into the motherboard via SATA cable and attach power from the PSU
step 4 turn on the computer
step 5 open disk manager (right click on "computer" "my computer" "this PC" and go down to manage, click on disk management) and import the foreign disk*
step 6 open the hard drive in file explorer and there are your files

you can leave the drive there or copy what is needed off of it at your leisure.
*may not be necessary
 
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smoothrunes

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Nov 29, 2014
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Will SATA cables already be inside the computer or do I need to purchase one?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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The SATA power is almost certainly already existing from your PSU.
The SATA data...only you know if you have a spare one. This connects from the drive to your motherboard. Just like the cable form your current drive(s).
 
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smoothrunes

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Nov 29, 2014
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I'll have to take a look, the current desktop set-up only has one drive in use so in theory there should be spare cable slots available.
 
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smoothrunes

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I wouldn't have bought one, so unless they come with the MB, PSU or another component, then I guess I'll have to grab one, they seem fairly cheap anyway.
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Generally, a motherboard may come with 2 or more.
 
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