Help identifying ancient hard drive interface.

Energize · 13 Nov 2010 at 17:58

I have this old laptop with the screen broken and os screwed up and I want to recover some photos from it, but the hard drive has a connector I've never seen before, every laptop I've ever had has been standard sata.

PermaBanned · 13 Nov 2010 at 18:10

With laptops it's often a bit weird... if you take it out of the enclosure you might find that it's a converter that you can take off.

deadite66 · 13 Nov 2010 at 18:18

i'm sure i've seen a thread like this before on this forum, the interface seems familiar but i can't find the thread.

EDIT: i counted how many pins is had and googled seems to be laptop ide

Justintime · 13 Nov 2010 at 18:36

44 pin ide as used in laptops. You'll need a converter to hook it up to a desktop pc. You've not opened many laptops then? This was common up to 2005-2006 easily.

Energize · 13 Nov 2010 at 18:49

Justintime said:
44 pin ide as used in laptops. You'll need a converter to hook it up to a desktop pc. You've not opened many laptops then? This was common up to 2005-2006 easily.

I've opened numerous laptops, they just never used this connection, my nov 06 laptop used sata even.

Justintime · 13 Nov 2010 at 18:51

Its just IDE (you know, the interface that dominated for years and years before SATA?), nothing special. Check google or Ebay for a 44 pin laptop ide to desktop ide convertor. I've even got a few Core 2 laptops using IDE only, so its not exactly ancient

Energize · 13 Nov 2010 at 19:15

You know now I think about it, I'm sure I came across one of these before in some Roman ruins.

Found an adaptor on Amazon, thanks guys.

ubersonic · 13 Nov 2010 at 23:41

Justintime said:
Its just IDE (you know, the interface that dominated for years and years before SATA?), nothing special. Check google or Ebay for a 44 pin laptop ide to desktop ide convertor. I've even got a few Core 2 laptops using IDE only, so its not exactly ancient

No its Parallel ATA sometimes called PATA which was the interface replaced by SATA, IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics and is a type of drive design to which PATA and SATA both belong but SCSI does not

dowcow · 14 Nov 2010 at 02:21

Well, whatever, but when we used IDE drives, being as there was no such thing as SATA there was no need to distinguish the drives of the day as PATA. They were just known as IDE drives, or ata. Everyone just called the cables 'IDE cables.'

The laptop drives had 44 pins as opposed to the desktop having 40 pins as the power to the drive was supplied through the extra pins.

Justintime · 14 Nov 2010 at 02:35

ubersonic said:
No its Parallel ATA sometimes called PATA which was the interface replaced by SATA, IDE stands for Integrated Drive Electronics and is a type of drive design to which PATA and SATA both belong but SCSI does not

Thanks for the lesson, did you get that from a online dictonary? As the above poster said, back in the days before SATA there was PATA and SCSI but no one thought of IDE as PATA or called it that, we always called and will always call it IDE, i've never heard it being referred to as parallel ATA by anyone whos been in the business a while. Same goes for hoover, scotch tape, band aid etc..