how to read laptop hdd on my desktop pc?

SILUS28 · 11-20-2008, 11:21 AM

Hi all , hope you can help

I have a laptop which was running on vista. It now says that it cannot find the OS on boot up. The HDD is SATA as is my desktop pc which runs on xp . I have connected up the laptop hdd to my pc's SATA port and it regognises that thier is a usb device their but cannot communicate with it.

Is a caddy my only option or is it posible to get drivers onto my pc which will enable my desktop to read it? :

My goal was to recover all of my data from it before atempting a reinstall.

Many thanks

**grimx133** · 11-20-2008, 04:58 PM

An enclosure isn't going to help at this point. Just to make sure I connected a laptop sata hdd to a desktop motherboard sata port, hooked power to it and booted up. No problems recognizing the drive. Only thing I had to do was take ownership of the documents and settings folder to access the old data. Might as well grab some of that while I have it hooked up.
You need to have the drive recognized by a computer, putting it into a caddy won't change that. You hooked up both a sata data cable and a sata power cable to it?

11-20-2008, 11:21 AM	#1 (permalink)
SILUS28 Registered User Join Date: Nov 2008 Posts: 1 OS: xp sp2	how to read laptop hdd on my desktop pc? Hi all , hope you can help I have a laptop which was running on vista. It now says that it cannot find the OS on boot up. The HDD is SATA as is my desktop pc which runs on xp . I have connected up the laptop hdd to my pc's SATA port and it regognises that thier is a usb device their but cannot communicate with it. Is a caddy my only option or is it posible to get drivers onto my pc which will enable my desktop to read it? : My goal was to recover all of my data from it before atempting a reinstall. Many thanks

11-20-2008, 04:58 PM	#2 (permalink)
grimx133 Mentor Hardware Team Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Canada eh Posts: 2,203 OS: xp mce sp2, xp pro sp2, windows 7 beta My System	Re: how to read laptop hdd on my desktop pc? An enclosure isn't going to help at this point. Just to make sure I connected a laptop sata hdd to a desktop motherboard sata port, hooked power to it and booted up. No problems recognizing the drive. Only thing I had to do was take ownership of the documents and settings folder to access the old data. Might as well grab some of that while I have it hooked up. You need to have the drive recognized by a computer, putting it into a caddy won't change that. You hooked up both a sata data cable and a sata power cable to it? __________________