How can I connect a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer so I can recover, transfer files?
Yesterday my laptop failed to boot. Everything appears to be normal but each time I turn it on it hangs on Windows screen with a running bar. I cannot boot my laptop to the desktop. I tested the hard drive and it passed the test. I think that my hard drive is fine and the operating system is corrupted. I have very important files in my documents and I need to recover, transfer them to the desktop computer as soon as possible. How can I connect the laptop hard drive to a desktop computer?
It is nice that your hard drive passed the test. I think you have very good chances that your data is still good and you would be able to transfer it to the desktop computer. Here are some tips for connecting a laptop hard drive to a desktop computer:
1. You can use 2.5” hard drive adapter and connect the laptop hard drive directly to a desktop computer through the IDE connector on the system board. The desktop hard drive would be connected to IDE1 so you can connect the laptop hard drive to IDE2. After you boot the desktop computer the second hard drive would be detected and you can access it as a regular HDD. Now you can recover, transfer all needed files from the laptop hard drive to the desktop hard drive. Here are detailed instructions with pictures.
2. You can use an external USB enclosure for laptop hard drives. I think that would be the easiest and fastest way to access your data. You can find an external USB enclosure in any computer shop and it would cost you about $20-$30 or buy it here for $10. After you remove the laptop hard drive, place it inside the enclosure and connect to the desktop or another laptop computer via the USB cable. It is not necessary to install any drivers for the enclosure if the desktop PC runs Winodws 2000 or Windows XP. If the desktop PC runs Windows 98, then most likely you’ll have to install a driver for the enclosure before you can access the hard drive. The USB cable and the driver usually supplies with the external enclosure. Now you can access the laptop hard drive as a regular drive on your desktop/laptop computer.
May 9th, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I might have missed it if someone else asked the same question but my laptop boots to the password screen and I can access the shared files vie ethernet (wireless is not working). My question is : I would like to know if there is a way to access files on my drive that are not shared. I tried remote desktop and a few other things but the only thing I can access are my shares. Unfortunately this does not help when a majority of my work is not shared.
Any ideas without going to the store to purchase anything? I was going to directly connect them through USB but read a post that scarred me about messing up my desktop.
Any suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated!
Thank you
May 8th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Cathy,
I’m not familiar with this software but let me guess. Here’s what I found about *.tib files.
Where did you save the *.tib file? Is it on a separate partition on the hard drive?
May 8th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
How can I recover *.tib files back to my hard drive?
– I backed up my files using an acronis software before I installed a new OS in it. How can I copy those files back into my computer?
Thank you so much for all your help!
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Ali Khan,
Sound that you have a problem with the hard drive.
Here’s what you can try.
1. Download a copy of live-linux CD, for example Knoppix (I love this distro, very useful).
2. Boot your laptop from the Knoppix CD. The environment will be very similar to Windows.
3. If the hard drive is detected, it will appear on the desktop. You can click on the hard drive and see if your files are readable.
4. Knoppix comes with CD/DVD burning software, you’ll find it in the start menu. You can use this software to burn all personal files on a CD or DVD.
5. Alternatively, you can transfer files to a USB flash drive formatted with FAT or FAT32 (not NTFS) but before you can do that you’ll have to play with USB drive properties (right click on the drive and then go to Properties) in order to enable writing to the USB drive. This is more advanced but you’ll figure out.
May 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Recently my Laptop IBM – Think Pad T40 stoped working. My windows can not start in any mode. It boots up to windows option then just stays there forever.
I tried to connect my Hard drive through USB, but my computer is not detecting it. I even bought new IDE connector case but still the issue is same. Infact even working HDD from any IBM thinkpads are not detected. Tried it on many laptops and computer, never works.
Can any one help please. I have very important data to recover from Hard Disk.
April 18th, 2008 at 10:57 am
Thankyou so much for the valuable information. I am just going to buy this usb enclosure.
God Bless You!
April 18th, 2008 at 3:49 am
Hi,
I have an exact problem but this is my pc’s hard disk. For my pc, i cannot even turn on windows.
Read the posts and was very helpful. Encountered a different problem however. My hard disk is connected via a IDE to a usb cable which is then connected to my laptop. My laptop detects the hard disk and and am able to open it on the My Computer icon. However, instead of detecting it as a 40gb hard disk, it is only detected as a 10mb disk with 7mb of space being used up. There is only 1 file present when i click explore. The file is labelled c; with a size of 46kb+.
Stuck now as I really do not know what the problem is and do need to remove some data before i can reformat this drive. Appreciate any assistance you can render.
April 14th, 2008 at 3:52 am
I was reading the above comments and they are extremely helpful. My Gateway 5350 crashed and it continues the reboot loop from the safemode screen. I cannot get it to boot up from any mode. I recently purchased a Dell Insp. 1525 but waiting for it to arrive. I was wondering if there is anything I need to know about connecting these two together using an enclosure? I have not yet purchased an enclosure yet so any advice would be greatly helpful!
Thanks in advance, have a great day!
March 11th, 2008 at 12:05 am
thanks for the input. There are no unusual noises coming from the the laptop at all. Guess I’m just going to suck it up, get the enclosure and HOPE it works!!!
Thanks again.
March 10th, 2008 at 8:02 pm
Lana,
This sounds more like a problem with the hard drive, not the memory. Did you notice if the laptop is making repetitive clicking sounds coming from the hard drive area when you are trying to copy pictures? If it does, you have a problem with the hard drive.
I think you may have better luck if you use an external USB enclosure. In this case, if you cannot transfer one particular picture, go to the next one. Hopefully you can get some of them.
March 9th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
This is exactly the site I was looking for. Reading all the above messages gave me a few ideas for my problem.
I dropped my laptop (HP) with all my kids pictures saved on the HD. The laptop WILL boot up, but everything is VERY slow – takes 30 minutes to copy 1 small picture to flash that use to take 10 seconds. I have 100’s of pictures. To make matters worse…some pictures say they can not be copied (something about system redundancy).
Does this sound like I damaged the RAM or something more serious. Any ideas how to fix? If not, sounds like I need to do what you all are doing:
Try a HD enclosure transfer to desktop via USB.
Any thoughts?
Thank you so much!
February 17th, 2008 at 7:26 am
now what if the files are in your desktop portion of the harddrive and since you cant get to them from the original computer will you be able to acess them from an external device or will you need special skills please help me contact me here or my email campos.city@gmail.com
February 16th, 2008 at 6:40 am
I just wanted to say a HUGE thank you to you for making this info available and easy to understand. My laptop ended up with a corrupted registry, and none of the possible fixes worked. So Dell told me my only option was to reformat the hard drive and lose all my data. Or I could pay $250 – $350 for someone to “rescue” the documents and pics from my hard drive before reformatting.
I tried your solution and it worked like a charm! I used an external USB enclosure for my laptop hard drive and saved my important files onto my desktop hard drive. It was easy and fast, just as you said it would be. I encountered no problems of any kind.
I am SO relieved to have this nightmare solved. A thousand thanks!
February 9th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
hello i purchased a 2.5 dd enclouser im using my hd from my lap top. i want to recover the files from this drive but it keeps telling me to format.you state that i have to set the drive to master.on the hard drive the master
has no pin covered the slave does im talking about the little white four pin plug how do i set it to master? thanks a head of time.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:44 pm
Lance,
Most likely right now you have a DVD drive connected to the IDE 2. You can temporarily unplug the DVD drive and plug your adapter with the laptop hard drive instead. In this case you’ll have only one drive (laptop hard drive) attached to the secondary IDE channel and there shouldn’t be any conflict between drives. The laptop hard drive will be detected and recognized by the computer.
No it’s not the same cable. The desktop hard drive is connected to the primary IDE channel. If you connect the laptop hard drive to the same cable there could be a conflict between drives. You can avoid the conflict and make it work if you set the desktop hard drive as a master and the laptop hard drive as a slave, but you’ll have to find a small jumper for the laptop hard drive and then find out with pins you have to short in order to set it as a slave drive. If you connect the laptop hard drive to the same cable with the desktop hard drive without configuring drives, most likely both drives will be conflicting each other and one of the drives or both of them will not be detected.
February 6th, 2008 at 8:15 am
Ok I have a dell Inspiron 1200, the Hd crashed, so I bought a new one, about a week after the HD crashed, the cd/dvd drive also crashed so I have no access to the cd drawer.
I have access to a IDE adapter and think I am going to use it however I need a little more of an explanation on what to connect to in my desktop to have the desktop see the laptop’s HD, above you said connect the IDE adapter cable to IDE 2 is that on the motherboard or is that the same IDE cable that is connected to the harddrive on my desktop the cable has a second connection point on the cable.( I think that is used for a slave ) I have not opened the tower yet and maybe should have looked before asking but I thought I would ask anyway.
January 13th, 2008 at 5:03 am
Hi again ….
in my task manager, the system process is always running at 99% and my system is getting real slow .. any idea what the problem could be and how to fix it …
My ram is fully functional ….
I have repeatedly changed my hard disk …
Any ideas????
January 12th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Thanks so much man .. Big Help ……
Cheers
January 12th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Ravi,
You’ll have to take ownership over the folder and files you are trying to transfer to the desktop computer. Apparently a lot of people experiencing the same problem trying to transfer files, so here I explained how to take ownership over folders and files.
January 12th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Hi ..
My laptop OS crashed suddenly .. I have no recovery cd’s . I have some documents that i need to transfer real urgently, so i connected the laptop hd to an external case and tried copying it to my desktop. But it says access denied cause my documents ere passord protected on my laptop …
Is there any ay to go around this???????
Please Help …..
December 23rd, 2007 at 10:58 pm
Hi,
Can i connect my external CPU to my laptop monitor… Actually i am having a laptop and i am planning to get a desktop CPU but i want my laptop screen should work for that external CPU… So that i will not purchase any Monitor… i will swap between laptop CPU and Desktop CPU…. but the monitor will be only one that is laptop screen….
November 28th, 2007 at 8:53 pm
Laura/FL,
I fixed the link.
Milton’s suggestion didn’t work for you because he linked you to a wrong page.
You don’t have to change user rights, you have to take ownership of the My Documents folder.
November 28th, 2007 at 9:40 am
Hi, I have the same problem as scott: my laptop crashed but the HDD works fine. Now i connected the HDD to my work laptop with a USB-connector, where then the HDD works as an external hard disk. I had on my old laptop a password with my user profile, and now i cannot access the folder on the old hard disk X:/my documents/USERNAME as i get a reply ‘access denied’. Milton’s suggestion of changing user rights does not work, as i am logged on my work cpu with a different username.
Any ideas?
# scott Says:
February 7th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
HI,
Milton’s suggestion (22) does not work for me as the complete laptop, now accessible via USB, does not allow me to share the my documents. Any other suggestions?
Scott
November 15th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Hi,
I have figured out what was wrong with the hard drive and currently I am transferring file (folders infact) to my office desktop
My USB enclosure has just 1 USB cable. Actually I came to know that I had this software Roxio GoBack on my old hard drive which was failing the desktop to display the hard drive in My Computer. I had a feeling that my hard drive is not damaged. So I made the jumper setting of the old HDD to master again(I had previously changed it to slave) and rebooted the computer. As soon as it rebooted, I pressed F12 to enter the BIOS set up, where I selected the USB controller to boot from. Once I did this, my old HDD came into action as I could see Roxio GoBack software. Pressing Spacebar, disabling it and clicking continue, desktop asked for a reboot (this was expected as windows registry in my old HDD had some problems). I went to BIOS set up again to change the boot to hard disk of desktop. and shut the computer down to change jumper position of laptop HDD to slave again. Starting the computer and logging in, I could see my hard drive in My Computer (I was ecstatic at this moment!!). As mentioned in the previous post (thanks to Laptop Freak), I gained the ownership of the folders I wanted and now the transfer process is on its way!!!
Roxio Go Back software is a disaster!! Better remove it before it creates more problem! (My advise) In last 5 years of installing this software, I used it just once which did not create a restore point where I wanted it to restore to!! I guess it has never helped me!
November 15th, 2007 at 9:27 am
Rahul,
First of all, try rebooting the desktop PC. In some cases you have to reboot computer after you attach an external hard drive.
Most likely your external USB enclosure cable has two USB connectors on one end. Make sure both USB connectors are connected to the PC so the hard drive is getting enough power.
November 15th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Hi,
I just tried connecting my laptop HD with USB enclosure with my desktop (windows xp pro). The baloons on the bottom right state that the drive is ready to use but I do not see the corresponding icon in My Computer. I checked device manager and Disk management, and both show that the device is working properly and healthy. In Disk Management, It mentions the details of the Hard drive but when I right click it, the options for Open and Explore cannot be selected. Please advise me what to do now. This hard drive has roughly 5 years of my work on it. Thanks.
November 14th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Rahul,
If you connect this hard drive to a computer with Windows XP, you shouldn’t have any problem transferring personal files, unless the hard drive has some kind of mechanical problem.
In this case you’ll have to take ownership of the files on the external hard drive.
November 14th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
I have a Toshiba Satellite 1905-S301 laptop. Few weeks back when I started it, a dialog box opened up saying there is some problem with the registry. I have tried connecting my laptop hard drive using USB enclosure to my new Mac Book Pro, however it mentions that the disk you inserted was not readable by this computer due to unrecognizable filesystem. My question is if I connect this hard drive to Windows XP pc, will I be able to transfer the important files then? Its hard to understand that the Desktop will have access to the files which originally require administrator password to log into. I seek some advise on this. Thank you.
November 8th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Lance,
You’ll find Outlook data in .pst file. Scan the hard drive for .pst file and back it up. After that import .pst into the new installation of Outlook.
Cannot help you with the Timeslips program, I’m not familiar with this software.
November 5th, 2007 at 2:24 am
I recently lost the motherboard on my Dell Inspiron, but the hard drive was intact. So far I’ve been able to retrieve all documents, but I’m still missing Outlook data (calendar entries, email, etc.) and similar data from the Timeslips billing program. If I connect the hard drive to my desktop using an external enclosure, will I be able to export the data I need from the laptop HD? No recent backup files were already available, so that’s essentially what I’m trying to make from the old drive. The programs have all been reloaded on the desktop.