Reading Hard Drive

Malcmandy

Hi ! I removed the HD from my Toshiba laptop after it died. Is there any way that I can get at the information on it please ? I am NOT a techie !
The info. reads HDD2157C plus other numbers and letters.

THanx:huh:

fwor

The easiest way is to buy a USB hard drive caddy and plug it into another PC. There are a couple of different types of connection to the drive, so you will need to find out which you have before buying.

Chances are that this one will do what you want.

To state the obvious - if the laptop died because the HDD stopped working, you probably won't be able to get anything off it though.

Malcmandy

Thanx for that. The motherboard went awry, and it wasn't worth fixing. Hopefully, I will be able to retrieve the info. It's worth a try.

Malcmandy

By the way, my connection appears to be a long series of pins in a proud box and then 4 stand alone pins 2x2 ??????

ehlo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA

You say a long series of pins so I assume it will be pata (also known as IDE)

Something like this supports either type of drive and is just plug in and use . You can probably find something cheaper than this (I just picked the first hit on Google from a reputable supplier )

spud17

Also, if you haven't picked up on it, laptop hard drives are mounted in a carrier.

The drive needs to be removed from this before you can connect it to whatever you decide on.

pendulum

You can do this for £2
Buy an adapter like this http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-2-5-Laptop-3-5-Desktop-Hard-Drive-IDE-Adapter-/250643739764?cmd=ViewItem&pt=UK_Collectables_HardDriveEnclosures_RL&hash=item3a5b87f474
That'll let you plug your IDE laptop harddrive into your PC as a slave (you might need to set a jumper on the laptop HD to slave)
Boot your PC up and you should see your laptop drive appear in My Computer with all your files so you can copy them off

Malcmandy

THank you very much everyone.