# hard drive cases
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-cases/524103
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [January 8, 2010, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-cases/524103 "2010-01-08T00:29:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2010, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-cases/524103/1 "2010-01-08T00:29:46Z")
My laptop got hit by a bus, and I was hoping to see if I could access the latest data on the hard drive, in particular the stuff that hadn’t yet been backed up. I was under the impression that it is pretty trivial to pop out a hard drive and stick it into a USB-connected enclosure. This may be the case, but I apparently don’t know what I’m doing.
I purchased a 2.5" hard drive enclosure. My drive sort of fits into it, but the connector is wrong. My drive has a connector with 9 pin holes on one side and 12 on the other, but the enclosure has 7 and 15, if that makes any sense. My hard drive is about 4 years old, if that’s important.
It looks like I wasted $20 on the wrong sort of enclosure. Anyone know what I should have purchased?
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### Author:  [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2010, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-cases/524103/2 "2010-01-08T06:26:54Z")
Take your hard drive with you to the store, or take a really good picture of it and bring that with you and match it up. There are, as you found, several different configurations, and you’ll always buy the wrong one first according to some law of physics.
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### Author:  [@Dervorin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dervorin)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2010, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-cases/524103/3 "2010-01-08T12:50:02Z")
Take a good look at this picture: [http://jekkilekki.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/sata-ide-laptop-hard-drive.jpg](http://jekkilekki.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/sata-ide-laptop-hard-drive.jpg)
If your drive looks like the one on the left, you want a SATA enclosure.
If it’s the right-hand one, it’s an IDE (or PATA) enclosure.
In both cases, you need to specify that it’s for a 2.5" drive. My guess is that a laptop that’s 4 years old is more likely to have an IDE interface, but always check. To the best of my knowledge, there are no other widely used interfaces in laptops - I don’t think SCSI was ever used for anything other than servers.
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### Author:  [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)
#### Post date: [January 8, 2010, 1:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-cases/524103/4 "2010-01-08T13:04:33Z")
> [@Dervorin](#):
>
> Take a good look at this picture: [http://jekkilekki.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/sata-ide-laptop-hard-drive.jpg](http://jekkilekki.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/sata-ide-laptop-hard-drive.jpg)
>
> If your drive looks like the one on the left, you want a SATA enclosure.
> If it’s the right-hand one, it’s an IDE (or PATA) enclosure.
>
> In both cases, you need to specify that it’s for a 2.5" drive. My guess is that a laptop that’s 4 years old is more likely to have an IDE interface, but always check. To the best of my knowledge, there are no other widely used interfaces in laptops - I don’t think SCSI was ever used for anything other than servers.
Thanks. Looks like it’s the right-hand one, but with a female connector. I’ll double check when I get home and order a new one.
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### Author:  [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2010, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-cases/524103/5 "2010-01-16T17:44:01Z")
It’s an HP 40GB 4200RPM EIDE Ultra ATA/100 9.5mm 2.5-Inch Notebook Hard Drive for HP Pavilion dv4000 Series Notebook PC Mfr P/N 367786-001. Looks like [this](http://www.payam.com.au/webimages/fujitsu/scale.jpg)
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### Author:  [@JSexton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JSexton)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2010, 8:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-cases/524103/6 "2010-01-16T20:06:13Z")
There is probably an adapter attached to it that covers up the pins. It should just slide right off. Once it’s off, it should fit into a 2.5" IDE enclosure.
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### Author:  [@JKilez](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKilez)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2010, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-cases/524103/7 "2010-01-16T23:42:35Z")
> [@JSexton](#):
>
> There is probably an adapter attached to it that covers up the pins. It should just slide right off. Once it’s off, it should fit into a 2.5" IDE enclosure.
I was just about to suggest this very thing.
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### Author:  [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)
#### Post date: [January 23, 2010, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-cases/524103/8 "2010-01-23T04:01:57Z")
> [@JSexton](#):
>
> There is probably an adapter attached to it that covers up the pins. It should just slide right off. Once it’s off, it should fit into a 2.5" IDE enclosure.
Correct. I finally got an enclosure. I was able to yank the adapter off the drive. I couldn’t get it to work on my PC, but oddly enough it hooked right up to my sister’s mac and I was able to pull of the files that didn’t make it onto the backup. 🙂
Now I just need to buy a new laptop and keep it away from buses.
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### Author:  [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)
#### Post date: [January 23, 2010, 5:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hard-drive-cases/524103/9 "2010-01-23T05:27:15Z")
> [@Ruken](#):
>
> Now I just need to buy a new laptop and keep it away from buses.
If you do that, you won’t be able to access any of the data on your new hard disk\* 😛
\*SATA, IDE, SCSI, etc. are all types of buses. Data buses.