Back up Laptop Hard drive

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Boy am I in over my head. I want to copy information off of my laptop hard
drive. It is a long story why. I have removed the hard drive and bought a
connector so that I can connect the lap top hard drive to my tower
computer. The connector has taps on one side to supply power to the laptop
drive. The problem is that the connector has all of its pins on the top an
the bottom on both of the male sides and all the holes on the femal side so
I do not know which way to plug it in. The mating female plug (the one on
the wireing harnes of the tower) has a pin hole missing so that I will have
to remove one pin from the connector so that I can plug it in. My question
is which side should the electrical connection be on and which pin should I
remove from the connector? Once I remove a pin the connector is usless if I
do it upside down and even worse if I do it upsidedown I may fry the laptop
drive.

Is there a website taht I can go to?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Carguy wrote:
> Boy am I in over my head. I want to copy information off of my laptop hard
> drive. It is a long story why. I have removed the hard drive and bought a
> connector so that I can connect the lap top hard drive to my tower
> computer. The connector has taps on one side to supply power to the laptop
> drive. The problem is that the connector has all of its pins on the top an
> the bottom on both of the male sides and all the holes on the femal side so
> I do not know which way to plug it in. The mating female plug (the one on
> the wireing harnes of the tower) has a pin hole missing so that I will have
> to remove one pin from the connector so that I can plug it in. My question
> is which side should the electrical connection be on and which pin should I
> remove from the connector? Once I remove a pin the connector is usless if I
> do it upside down and even worse if I do it upsidedown I may fry the laptop
> drive.
>
> Is there a website taht I can go to?

If it is any consolation to you, the missing pin on the
HD header corresponds to Pin 20. By convention, Pin 1 on
the the HD is the top pin on the side of the header that
is adjacent or nearest to the power connector on the HD.
This is also the side where the stripe on the 40-conductor
ribbon cable belongs. And if there should be a notch built
into the plastic surround to the pins on the HD to proper
orientate the insertion of the ribbon cable so that the
blanked opening in the ribbon connector fits into the
hole left by the empty Pin 20.

Next time, for the would-be or challenged computer techie,
get an external USB hard drive or a 1 or 2 GB jump drive.
Much easier to use than swapping hard drives in and out of
computer systems (and mis-wiring them).