internal HD laptop as external HD

[pbf98]

I have a friend whos laptop stopped working, hard drive is fine warrenty is up, and she just got a new one tonight.
Now I know you can take desktop Harddrives and make them to external drives.. but can this be done with laptop drive... and one that has not been formatted? She has old files on that hard drive that she'd like of course so that was my first idea.

Is there logic to my thinking or is there another way or no way at all?

Thank you

 

[Seanette]

My DH has an adapter that allows for operations like this. I'm reasonably sure he'll see this post and provide more info.

 

[linuxrich]

Yes, you can get external cases for 2.5" drives. Here's an example of a cheapo one for a SATA drive.

From my experience, you might have to use some sort of recovery method like running TestDisk to get old files off of the drive once it's installed in an external case. This depending on what state it was in when the laptop died. Once that's done, you could then reformat and use however you wish.

 

[pbf98]

Yes, you can get external cases for 2.5" drives. Here's an example of a cheapo one for a SATA drive.

From my experience, you might have to use some sort of recovery method like running TestDisk to get old files off of the drive once it's installed in an external case. This depending on what state it was in when the laptop died. Once that's done, you could then reformat and use however you wish.

Thank you very much precisely the answer I was looking for

 

[saptech]

In fact, I'm using a 160gb laptop HD with a nice aluminum enclosure I've had for about 3 years now. I take it back n forth to work with me to listen to music and or watch movies I ripped on it.

 

[h4x0rj3ff]

i have an old wd passport that i opened up and put the hdd from that in my xbox and now i have an adapter for sata drives. if you have a portable drive chances are its sata and you can open it up and use the adapter then put it back the way you got it when your done.

 

[pbf98]

Do you know if there is a gui program that would allow me to look into it? I am horrible with cmd promt

 

[argedion]

Do you know if there is a gui program that would allow me to look into it? I am horrible with cmd promt

Testdisk isn't that bad just need to follow the prompts. But you may not need it. Sometimes stopping the disk like that causes problems and sometimes it doesn't.