How to transfer laptop hdd files to desktop?

Question

Okay. My laptop overheated and fried. So I can't turn it on anymore. I don't plan on fixing it, but I would like the files on my laptop's HDD. How can I transfer over the files to my PC?

What would I have to do?

Answer 1

Hi there:
I just answered this question a few minutes ago...

here is the last answer,

hope it helps...

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Laptops usually have a CARRIER- a very thin box with a pull tab on
the outside end, and a special connector with an adapter to the
laptop standard 44 pin pins, which connects to a plastic, proprietary
plug inside the harddrive bay.

Remove the carrier/ harddrive. Take out the screws and clips etc
to remove the harddrive from inside the carrier.

You now have a bare laptop harddrive, which "normally" has two rows of pins, for a total of 44 pins. The first 40 pins are pin to pin
identical with the standared IDE/ATA 40 pins used inside an
ordinary desktop case. The extra 4 pins are used to give high
voltage 5 Volts, Ground, and to optionally control the the ON/OFF of the harddisk platter spin motor, and the entire HDD green circuitboard, ( power saving features ).

A small green circuit board adapter is avalable at most computer
repair/retailers where computers are hand-built and repaired ( not
particularly at big centers where only full, complete computers are sold ). This adapter has the standard large 40 pin IDE
connector on one side, to fit in the existing desktop 40 or 80 wire
IDE/ATA ribbon cable connector, and, a short length of Red, BLACK, BLACK, YELLOW wires, and the Molex connector on the end to get +5 Volts needed to run the laptop drive ( Fed into
the Ground and +5 V pins 43 and 44 on
the laptop drive ) The yellow wire, +12 V, is not connected to anything.
The other side of the adapter board has a connector to fit directly onto the 44 pins of the laptop HardDiskDrive.

You should read the label on the HDD, and go to the manufacturer's website to find the Master/Slave jumper settings.
Since "most" laptops only have 1 HDD, I am assuming the
jumper will be set for MASTER. (newer laptops have 2 harddrives ).

In your Desktop computer you can use a 40 pin IDE cable and plug into the SECONDARY IDE connector and install the HDD as a
MASTER, or, add it to an existing cable as a SLAVE ( which will
require you to correctly change the jumper on it to the SLAVE position.)

Then you can read and write the information you need to your desktop. There are a number of exceptions however, in that,
if the desktop is FAT16 ( win3xx, NT, etc) or FAT32 (win98xx, or
cludged ME etc. ) and the laptop was XP ( NTFS formatted), then
the desktop can't read the NTFS formatting...

In the future, you should state what the formatting of the laptop HDD was, and what the formatting of the Destop is, so that
people can give you EXACT answers, instead of guessing what
is mostly "LIKELY", which could be really bad for you... your
laptop could be running DOS, OS/2, Linus, Unix, Win3.1, ME, Win 95 A,B,or C,
2000, BEOS, XP, etc. as could your Desktop, and there are
different proceedures to transfere data. By providing more
details in your question, you will get faster, better answers that will be easier to use...

hope this helps you get your data

robin

Answer 2

you have to make it work first or you can't