[duality]

Hard drive appears intact, although cosmetically the laptop is totally wrecked and does not power up. Do I need the motherboard specs of this Inspiron 1501 to know what other type of laptop I can swap the hard drive with? Is it more/less complicated than that to switch a laptop's HD?



Thanks much

[smax013]

duality said:

Hard drive appears intact, although cosmetically the laptop is totally wrecked and does not power up. Do I need the motherboard specs of this Inspiron 1501 to know what other type of laptop I can swap the hard drive with? Is it more/less complicated than that to switch a laptop's HD?





Thanks much

I would not suggest "swapping" the drive into a new computer. The drivers and such as setup for the Inspiron 1501. So, unless you get another Inspiron 1501, it would probably have problems booting into Windoze due to the drivers issue and the Windoze Activation issue (your hardware would have changed enough to cause problems with the Windoze Activation process most likely). Plus, unless you are going to just use that old drive in the new computer, it does not really some the problem of getting the files off, unless you burn them to DVD or CD.



If the new computer is a 17" computer that comes with 2 hard drive bays, then I suppose you could install it in the second hard drive bay and copy the files to the new drive. Then decide if you want to keep that drive as a second drive (if you trust that it was not damaged) or get ride of it.



The other option is to get an external enclosure for the drive that will allow you to hook it up by way of a USB port. It appears the the drive should be a 2.5" SATA drive. If so, then these external enclosures should all be options.



The last option is to get an adapter like this that will allow you to hook up virtually any bare hard drive to a USB port. It will be more expensive than an enclosure most likely, but will work with 2.5" (laptop) & 3.5" (desktop) SATA drives and 2.5" (laptop) & 3.5" (desktop) IDE/ATA drives. Thus, it can be a good "emergency" tool to have around in case you have problems with a computer.

[duality]

most excellent sir, those usb enclosures are nice and cheap.



yeah, i am already going to get an ibook next i have decided, not sure if that is your sig or something you added on the end of your post, but yeah. thanks again for the reply.

[smax013]

duality said:

most excellent sir, those usb enclosures are nice and cheap.





yeah, i am already going to get an ibook next i have decided, not sure if that is your sig or something you added on the end of your post, but yeah. thanks again for the reply.

That would be me signature. Even though I use Windoze on a regular basis, I like my Macs better...and it amuses me to "tweak" Windoze folks.



Unless you are thinking about getting a used Mac, you would be looking at a MacBook or MacBook Pro. Regardless, if you have questions about Macs, feel free to fire away. I rather enjoy my MacBook Pro.



I would further add that if the hard drive looks like it is still good (i.e. does not appear to have been damaged) and you "trust" it enough to keep using it, then I would suggest that you might want to consider getting a Firewire enclosure for it if you go with a Mac. First of all, if you are thinking about a used iBook, older Macs that use PowerPC processors (i.e. G3 or G4) will NOT boot off of a USB drive (I believe there might be ways to do it, but it is not supported). Thus, if you want to use the old drive as a clone backup or otherwise be able to use it as a bootable drive, then you will need it to be Firewire. In addition, Firewire is faster. And last, Firewire bus powered drives only require one port, while USB bus powered drives will sometimes need two USB ports to get enough power, depending on the computer. And since all Macs comes with a Firewire port, it is a better option. You can get a Firewire enclosure for a 2.5" SATA drive here. Unfortunately, it is quite a bit more expensive than most USB enclosures.

[duality]

ya, all i really need to do is get all the data off teh drive, then i can throw it away, it doesnt matter

15 bucks on a usb enclosure will work just fine



for macs, i want a notebook for recording music, and processing audio, etc, so it will have to be fast.

[smax013]

duality said:

ya, all i really need to do is get all the data off teh drive, then i can throw it away, it doesnt matter

15 bucks on a usb enclosure will work just fine






for macs, i want a notebook for recording music, and processing audio, etc, so it will have to be fast.

Well, both MacBooks and MacBook Pros both use modern Intel Core 2 Duo processors. So, they will be plenty fast.

[duality]

I ended up buying this enclosure:



https://www.shop4tec...m/item5141.html



It's the right size, but the Dell HD is not compatible with the end of the enclosure that plugs into the HD. The end of the dell HD looks more like a card, the enclosure looks more like an IDE type of connection, with holes for pins and a power cable.

[smax013]

duality said:

I ended up buying this enclosure:





[https://www.shop4tech.com/item5141.html]






It's the right size, but the Dell HD is not compatible with the end of the enclosure that plugs into the HD. The end of the dell HD looks more like a card, the enclosure looks more like an IDE type of connection, with holes for pins and a power cable.

Are you able to take a picture of the connect of the Dell HD with a digital camera and post the picture? That might help us determine what kind of connection it is. This is how a typical laptop IDE connection will look:







It will look a lot like a 3.5" (desktop) drive IDE connection, but with 4 fewer pins. This is because desktop drives have a seperate power connection while laptop drive have the power and data connection all in one.



A SATA connection will look like this:





The smaller connector on the the right (grey colored with a slight "L" shape) is the data connection. The larger connector on the left (again grey colored with a slight "L" shape) is the power connection.



If it does not look like either of those, then it might be some odd ball connector, but I am not aware of anyone using non-standard connectors for hard drives...unless it is a REALLY old drive and Dell used SCSI (but Apple was the only "mainstream" computer manufacturer that went with SCSI drives that I am aware of).

[duality]

Well that explains it... The drive is an SATA and the enclosure i bought is an IDE.

[smax013]

duality said:

Well that explains it... The drive is an SATA and the enclosure i bought is an IDE.

Hope you don't mind, but I will do a little "I told you so dance"! :D

From an ealier post:

"The other option is to get an external enclosure for the drive that will allow you to hook it up by way of a USB port. It appears the the drive should be a 2.5" SATA drive. If so, then these external enclosures should all be options."



Sorry, could not help myself! ;-) I don't get to do it too often, so I have to take my oppertunities when I can! ]:)

[duality]

yup i know you said sata.... guess i missed that what i got was ide or something....

[smax013]

duality said:

yup i know you said sata.... guess i missed that what i got was ide or something....

That is OK...I was just giving you a hard time...all in fun. B-)



Fortunately, it looks like you did not spend to much on the IDE enclosure (based upon the link you provided). Keep the enclosure...you never know when you might need it. If you want, you could even go buy an IDE bare 2.5" laptop drive to use with the enclosure if you ever need more storage.

[duality]

ya thats what ill do, always need more storage

[mphenterprises]

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