[spooky31]

Hiyas,

A friend of mine just called to tell me his laptop has finally died, but he really needs the data off the hard drive. I said I would help by opening the laptop, removing the hard drive, plugging that hard drive into my desktop computer, and burning the data to DVD.

Is there any problems I'm likely to face doing this? My setup is IDE - is it safe to assume the laptop will be standard IDE (it's a rather old laptop)?

Thanks very much for any tips!

 

[dustyjay]

Is it ever safe to assume anything where computers are concerned. You can prepare yourself by doing a manufacturers website search for the particular model of laptop. You should be able to tell what type nard drive is installed. I am thinking that it is probably going to require an adapter to connect a notebook drive to a standard IDE cable.

 

[kiwiguy]

The older laptop will amost certainly be IDE, but not the "standard" IDE as in the desktop.

The adapter will be needed, they are quite cheap though.

The other altenative is to use an external 2.5" USB enclosure.

 

[JohnWill]

2.5" to 3.5" adapter, I use these all the time.