I had a Dell Inspiron 6000 that crapped out on me last July. On the HD I had half of my third book and considerable portions of books four and five.

While trying to find a way to recover the files off the old HD, a friend mentioned that there was a kind of connector cable that could be used to attach a laptop HD into a desktop, and this would allow access to the files in question.

Tiger Direct in Orland Park sold me a cable they claimed would allow the conversion, but one end was the wrong size and did not connect with my HD.

I went to another store and they sold me a GigaWare 2.5" IDE Hard Drive Enclosure which, the salesman assured me, would allow me to connect the HD to any desktop computer with 2 available USB ports. I even brought the HD with me to the store so they could look at it and make sure I was getting the right thing.

Again, it does not work. The connector inside the enclosure is completely incompatible with the pin set up on my HD.

Does anyone know of a REAL way I can connect the old HD to another computer?

The HD is a Hitachi Travelstar 2.5" and I really would prefer not to have to start writing these books all over again!

If both of the HD(laptop unit), and the DeskTop are IDE type units...there really shouldn't be that much of a problem.

I'm not sure if this will help you at all. This guy says all it takes is a laptop hard drive adaptor kit.

http://www.fixya.com/manuals/w153171-recover_data_from_hard_drive_dead_laptop

Additional info: You need to make sure that the HD from the LapTop is reset as a "slave" drive. Then if necessary...you may have to go into the DeskTop BIOS settings, to let it know you also have a slave(or 2nd drive)hooked up!

IDE 2.5 to IDE 3.5 adapter. $5 at the Fry's.

Or, any of the "external drive through usb" kit adapters, that have a 2.5 IDE port.

If your laptop drive is sata, then that is what you need.

Sorry, did not read your WHOLE post.

What do you mean "Incompatible"?

Does it seem that the connector inside the enclosure has different number of pins than the drive?

If yes, this is normal. Don't plug in the middle. Plug to cover one end of pin row completely. If no luck, then replug to cover other end of the row.

If your hard drive has flat connectors, kind of like USB flat connector, then this is SATA hard drive. You need Sata to USB adapter, or simply a sata cable, if your desktop already has SATA ports available.

Here is an example of IDE 2.5 to IDE 3.5 adapter.



You can see how the larger connector, 3.5, for desktops, has a power connector, but a smaller one, uses some of it's pins to receive power coming from a white (molex) connector? Where those leads come to, you'd have a side of laptop HD with 4 separate pins. Those separate pins are power.

Here is an example of an adapter ($14 - $29), that can connect any drive to Desktop via USB. It ha small pin connector, a large pin connector, and a SATA connector. They don't all look triangular.

The connector inside the enclosure case is a black, rectangular piece with 2 rows of holes in it, 22 holes in each row. Obviously this is for pin placement.

The HD has nothing which will fit into these holes.

The HD does have metal protrusions which are most likely intended to connect to something, but they cannot be inserted into the holes in the enclosure piece because the protrusions on the HD are blocked by resting upon a black plastic centerpiece which extends beyond the length of the protrusions themselves. There seems to be no viable way to attach the two pieces.

This is how a laptop drive with a SATA connector looks:

The very bottom section of the pic looks exactly like the connector inside the enclosure. I see no way to connect this to the HD.

Ok, so your external enclosure is definitely 2.5 IDE type. We know that now. It has 22x2 pins.

Actually, the very bottom is 40 pins, large IDE for desktop drives. Your enclosure has 22x2 pins, and that is the right of the triangular connector on the picture. They are look the same, except for their size and number of pins.

Does you laptop drive look like the SATA drive picture I have posted?

Yes. To be more precise, I will provide the information from the box:

GigaWare 2.5" IDE Hard Drive Enclosure with Carry Pouch, model 25-420.

Seems like a great idea, if only I could use it!

Tell me how your laptop drive connector looks. Compare to posted pictures.

No, mine just has the Hitachi label and info on one side, and the other side is mostly green but with a lot of small gold dots on it.

Sorry, I meant the connector on it. The picture of the drive is a drawing showing internal parts like the disk and arm, etc.

Does the connector on the laptop drive look anything like any of the pictures on this thread?

OK, it's basically a black plastic rectangle protruding from the end of the HD.

On each side of the rectangle are 22 vaguely arrow-shaped gold-colored metal tabs.

The tabs do not quite extend to the edge of the black plastic.

Got ya.

What you looking at is a connector spacer. Take a small screwdriver and remove the spacer from the laptop drive contact row.

Be careful. Pry it out on each side, side by side, make sure it comes out on both sides at the same time.

Under this spacer, you will find the 22x2 pins, exaclty corresponding to your enclosure connector.

This is what you will remove:




or:

Thank you! That is EXACTLY the piece I was talking about!

You're most welcome. Be careful, don't bend any pins.