Using External 2.5" hd in a PC

[dalehitchy1]

I have a external portable hard drive that has broken. I don't know if it is the hard drive itself or the USB connection that has broken on it. I want to check which one it is.

Anyway... i have removed the casing, and it has odd connections. Maybe its because i have never seen 2.5" connections before...and these are normal for laptop hard drives..

Can anyone tell me what connectors these are?

 

[darael]

Can you provide a picture of under the harddrive, where the circuit board is?

A lot of portable harddrives, such as Western Digitals, have the USB interface on the same harddrive's controller PCB. that's a mini/micro USB connector, not a SATA connector which is normally on harddrives - laptop or not - when bought these days.

If you're lucky, there will be a small split in the PCB where the manufacturer just plugged a SATA/IDE to USB interface on to the end of the harddrive. You should be able to just remove that, if so.