Acessing a laptop's hard drive on another machine.

So, a kid in my dorm took his hard disk out of his laptop, and (in the midst of a wave of theiveries) the laptop itself was stolen. It’s still insured, so no biggie long-term, but there’s a paper due soon/

I add drives to my desktop all the time, but the connection to his latop’s drive was unusually shaped, so I had nothing to fit it with. However, one other kid on our floor has the exact same laptop as he does.

I know it would void the warranty to open up a laptop’s case, but would it actually do any harm to shift one (virtually identical) drive for another? I can’t think of a single reason why it would, but I’ve been told by everyone not to touch a laptop’s hardware because the case & board are made very specifically for everything inside it.
In the general case- if there are technically competent folk present, and all components are pretty much the same (all specs, size. Maybe a different manufacturer), is there still harm in changing hardware in a laptop?

Often laptop HD’s are swapable without opening the case. That was certainly the situation with my HP Pavillion from 1-2 years ago.

You would be better off buying a $ 10.00 2.5" to 3.5" drive adapter from a local PC parts store and slaving it to a desktop as a secondary drive to pull the files off.

Starting the drive up in a new machine will change the registry as the OS tries to adapt to the new hardware platform, and it may not boot properly if the OS on the hard drive does not have the necessary drivers available.

If the notebook is more or less identical this won’t be an issue. Most modern notebook drives (with a few exceptions) are in modular trays which can be undocked and slid out of the machine. If his is one of the few that require diassembly of the chassis to access the drive, you’d better be pretty savvy about disassembling notebooks to try this. There are often lots of hidden catches and screws that hold notebooks together.

Thank you, Astro.

That is exactly what we needed.

threema wrote

I would go so far as to say “Generally HD’s are swappable without opening the case.” By their nature, they connect at one of their long ends, so look for something removable along one of the sides of the laptop, held in place by one or two screws on the bottom. Also, I don’t know of any companies who void the warranty if you swap the HD; that’s one component that is often swapped.

Though I agree that astro has a good idea, typically what you proposed in the OP will work fine, at least fine enough that you’ll be able to boot and access the network, allowing you to copy files off.

You should be able to swap the hard drives and boot it up. It may complain about missing drivers if there are slight differences in hardware, and at worst the driver setup on the “new” hard drive (the one from the stolen laptop) may get screwed up, but I can’t think of anything else that would go wrong.

Make sure you unplug the laptop and remove the battery before swapping the hard drive. Otherwise there’s a slight chance the computer is in some type of sleep mode rather than completely turned off.

Of course astro’s suggestion works too, it may be more useful and practical in the long run. Another option would be to buy a USB enclosure for the hard drive - just pop in the hard drive and it becomes an external USB hard drive.

I’d recommend the adapter, especially since you’d have to boot the laptop with the drive in question. If it’s running Windows XP, it’s quite likely that XP will notice the different hardware and lock down until it’s reactivated. Plus, if you have to do something like this again having the adapter already on hand will be much easier.

Cleophus wrote

This is not correct. I do it all the time.

I have to salvage data from “dead” laptop hard drives at work periodically. We keep a couple of USB 2.0 drive enclosures onhand for this, they cost about $15 at the local computer store and since 2.5" drives run off 5v the USB bus provides all the power you need, just plug the drive into the enclosure board, hook up the USB cable and you’re all set. W2K and WinXP recognize these enclosures with no problem and the “dead” drive shows up as just another external drive. Unless it’s physically damaged I’ve always been able to rescue the data.

The laptop drive probably does not have a proprietary connector, every 2.5" drive I’ve seen uses the exact same pin arrangement. However laptop manufacturers often have a different socket in the laptop itself, necessitating a small adapter on the 2.5" drive. It’s a tiny strip of plastic with some little pin holes that fits on the bus end of the hard drive. Once you have the laptop drive unscrewed from the little tray that it’s mounted to (the tray that fits into the laptop, we’re not talking about opening up the hard drive!) that adapter should just pull right off (might take a little gentle wiggling).

From there you are all set.

The only special items that you may need are some tiny little Phillips and Torx screwdrivers. Laptops have a number of really miniscule screws to unfasten so get a cheap set of jeweller’s screwdrivers (look for the itty bitty phillips heads) and also itty bitty Torx. Your local electronics or computer store should have them for a few bucks.