What type of cable/adapter do I need to connect to my PC hard drive?!
Question: What type of cable/adapter do I need to connect to my PC hard drive?
And finally I read that you need a power cable to power the drive, can't I just plug it in my laptop?
Thanks
Answers:
you can buy a docking station and you can fit your hard drive into that it will have a power cord on it for you to plug it into the wall socket and it will have a usb plug also on it for connecting to your laptop.
You are getting all kinds of mixed information throwen at you.
1st - To tell you if your computer is SATA or IDE you need to give me the make and model.
Note: This information only matters if you want an internal drive.
Note: IDE is pretty old so most computers today are SATA
2nd - Do you want this drive to go inside your laptop or stay outside the laptop? (Internal or External)
If you want it inside the laptop then no, you don't need any extra power stuff the laptop will handle it. Also, if you want it inside the laptop then you don't need any cables or adapters. Just the drive, but you need to know if your laptop takes IDE or SATA so you buy the correct one.
If you want it to be external then you DO need a USB cable and you will need to plug it into the wall for power. All of this can be provided in one nice little package by just purchasing an external hard drive (it will come with everything you need).
Note: A USB port does not give much power and hard drives typically spin faster than a car engine so no, you can't just run an external hard drive on the power from your USB port. That is only enough power for things like charging a cell phone.
My Brain
type SATA and then IDE into google images to see what type of drive you have. Then I would get a 5.25" external enclosure to put your drive into (and protect it) and connect to your laptop with USB. I've got a few of them they are great, you can add CD/DVD writers to them as well. Galaxy metal Gear boxes are the best very sleeky looking with cool neon lights, it depends how much you want to spend.
The PC drive is a 3.5" drive. If the drive has 40 pins it is an IDE drive. In which case you would need a 3.5" IDE to USB enclosure
this will do it
http://www.google.com/products/catalog?r…