A laptop hard drive in a desktop, plausible?

barneystuta · 17 Oct 2011 at 09:59

Google says yes, but wanted some real experience/thoughts.

It will only be to test a system, as we are being given one for my sister. I have no idea what is in the box (it is coming from an office, so I doubt it will be super powerful or have any sort of GPU). Will only be used for word processing/surfing the net.

But it wont have the hard drive (the owner would rather destroy that, as it has a lot of personal information on). So, to test the system, I need to put a Hard Drive in. Before I go and buy a new one, I want to see if it is worth it first (and test all the parts see what they are like.

Can I just connect a laptop hard drive to the mobo with ease? And if it works, then I can buy a hard drive? I wouldn't mount the laptop drive in the case, it would be just to test.

However, google also says you can use them. I have a few laptop hard drives knocking around plenty of storeage on them (talking 500GB+). Probably not the quickest, but just for a basic use, will they do a job?
Thanks.

1LANCS · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:00

If they are SATA drives then yes they use the exact same data and power connectors that desktop computers use. I have a 120Gb 2.5" SATA2 Notebook drive in my PC as a backup drive.

If they are IDE then you would need a converter.

Blue160 · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:02

No problem at all. I've hooked up loads of laptop drives to my motherboard to rescue people's data when their laptop breaks. Works just the same as a desktop drive.

barneystuta · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:02

Nice one. I am not at home at the moment, so will will check the connections when I get in. My gut feeling is they are IDE, so will find a converter just in case.

EDIT: Actually, think I got some with my mobo.

True_Scotsman · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:03

Depending on the age of the drives, if the drive is not SATA then you will need a converted from laptop ide to PC ide. If it's SATS then normal connections should be fine.

EDIT: Beaten

swinnie · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:15

barneystuta said:
Nice one. I am not at home at the moment, so will will check the connections when I get in. My gut feeling is they are IDE, so will find a converter just in case.

EDIT: Actually, think I got some with my mobo.

The laptop IDE connectors are different to the IDE connectors found in desktops.

FidelZastro · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:21

I wouldn't expect you to find a 2.5" drive with 500+ GB and IDE, but maybe I'm wrong. there are adapters from mob. IDE to both IDE and SATA available, so you should get them working anyway. Thinking of the speed, a 3.5" drive still would be my first choice though.

barneystuta · 17 Oct 2011 at 10:23

swinnie said:
The laptop IDE connectors are different to the IDE connectors found in desktops.

Ah right, could you link me to one?

EDIT: Something like this?

tigerstyle · 17 Oct 2011 at 12:16

that pic is laptop IDE to sata so sounds like you what you might end up needing

laptop IDE has the power built into it as you can see by both the SATA power and data cables coming out of the adapter there.