Are laptop (2.5") drives standard?

[NeilF]

My old Toshiba Satellite S3000 X4 decided to die last night. I recon it's the motherboard or something.

Now I've got about 3 months of photo's I want to get off, so if I buy one of these USB enclosures for 2.5" drives should it work? Or are some manufacturer's drives odd/proprietory in some way?

 

[NeilF]

The drive from the Toshiba should work. The drives have been standard for 6 years plus so it'll fit in an enclosure.

The only thing to watch out for is the drive may be in a caddy, I had an IBM 770 like that once but once you dismantled the caddy it was a standard 2.5" HDD inside, all the caddy did was move the connector to the long edge of the package.

From memory - I don't have the unit here - I undo two screws on the case and then pull and the drive simply slides out, complete with a block of the edge of the case (a couple of inches or so).

This sounds somewhat like your example so what I could be looking at there is actually a form of caddy with the drive in it. I'd need to open it up to remove it.

I'll order one of these USB caddies and have play.

ps: I have a quote to fix the laptop (replace the MB) - Over £500!!! Guess that's the end of that machine