Laptop hard drive down use pc hard drive??

garyjis

My laptop hard drive has gone kerput i they are pretty expensive to replace compared to standard pc hard drives. I have a few spare one in its own enclosure. I was wondering if i could use this external drive as the main drive to boot up my laptop. Will it boot from usb with this external drive or is there an adaptor u can use from the hard drive to the inside of the laptop so it thinks its just plugged in as normal?
Any help appreciated

afro_2

Go into the BIOS of your laptop and look for an option called boot from USB.

Most recent machines should have the option!

garyjis

i will try but its a fairly old machine. If not do u know if its possible to plug in a lead where the laptop hard drive would go in inside the laptop and the other end to a standard hard drive??

albertross_2

what is wrong with the original drive, is it corrupt, not spinning, clicking, what do you get on screen when it boots?

afro_2

If you're asking for advice on Money Saving Expert, then I doubt you're the hardware hacking type! Replacement laptop drives shouldn't be too expensive - try Aria, 40gb for £47.

If you're determined to use a desktop drive, then I've seen adaptors to allow laptop drives in desktops before, but never the other way around. (although in theory the same cable should work)

Laptop drives have 44 pins (4 for power) compared to the 40 pin on standard HDDs. (with a seperate molex plug for power). You'll have to find a way to power the drive, and get some kind of cable to plug the two together.

It's possible, but will look messy and be a bit of a pain to install!

There's a good example here: http://www.applefritter.com/node/10859

and you might find some useful cables from these guys:
http://mini-itx.com/store/?c=12#p2003