PCTech Forums

is your laptop completely dead, as in no OS, or dead as in won't boot?

If it still boots, go for AutoClave

If it won't boot, you'll probably need to remove the drive from your laptop and put it into your new laptop, then use AutoClave. (pinouts haven't changed since the days of MB to GB so it should work)

Hard drives are actually EMI shielded pretty darn well, so you won't do much with any normal magnet. You might have some luck with a powerful electro-magnet (like they use to pick up cars) or with a high end degauser... but I doubt you have either available to use.

Of course you could get rid of the laptop, keep the old hard drive, and buy a 2.5 inch external enclosure, so you have an extra, portable hard drive. There are many options, but a very quick search came up with this.



The most awesome thing about those drives is you only need one cable... 2.5 drives can draw power from thr USB port, so you don't need a power brick or any sort of AC adapter, making the drive truely portable, easily hot swappable, and actually quite fast.

EDIT: for more products (at newegg) click the following link

thanks guys, I'll head out at lunch today to see what I can pick up locally.

GeekGirl...Im not quite sure what your asking but i'll put it this way.That adaptor allows a 2 1/2" notebook/laptop (winbook is a new word to me,dont know if it applies) drive to be installed into a desktop machine using a standard 3 1/2" IDE cable.

Does that help?


pdeinc

Good luck with it,let us know how it goes

Thanks Brad, liljim, it all worked out fine. I used an $8 adapter from CompUSA. To save myself any grief, I just plugged the drive in on the secondary IDE with no other drives connected. I figured it would default to 'Master' or 'Single' and with no other drives, there'd be no conflict. Downloaded a utility to wipe files and directories clean and trudged through all relevant folders.

I did find the 2.5" drive enclosure w/USB adaptor/conversion intriguing. Seems like an interesting approach to portable storage for large amounts of data.