Let’s say your laptop failed to start but you have some important files on the hard drive you would like to access. Is it possible to recover data from a failed laptop or notebook computer? Yes, it is and the process is relatively simple.
First of all, I assume that the hard drive in your failed laptop is not damaged.The laptop fails to start but the hard drive is in a good working condition.
In order to recover data you will have to access and remove the hard drive. Fortunately in most laptops the hard drive can be easily accessed through a hatch on the bottom. If the hard drive has mounting brackets installed (like in my example), it might be necessary to remove those brackets.
How to recover data from a laptop IDE hard drive.
Let’s start with an IDE hard drive also known as PATA hard drive.
On the picture below you see a regular IDE hard drive. It has two rows of pins on the front side.
The easiest way to access and recover data from an IDE hard drive would be using an external USB enclosure. Make sure to choose a USB enclusure for 2.5″ IDE hard drives.
You attach your hard drive to a USB/IDE converter and then connect it to another working computer (laptop or desktop) via USB cable.
Advantages of using external USB enclosure:
1. Easy to assemble and setup even for novice users.
2. Can be connected to a laptop or desktop computer.
Disadvantages of using external USB enclosure:
Slow data transfer rate.
If you computer supports USB 2.0, the data transfer rate will not exceed 480Mbps (I assume the enclosure also supports USB 2.0).
If your computer supports only USB 1.1, the data transfer rate will not exceed 12Mbps and it might take hours to transfer large amount of data.
The second method is for more advanced users.
You can access and remove data much faster if you use a laptop to IDE hard drive adapter (on the picture below mentioned as IDE connector).
One side of the adapter connects to the laptop hard drive. The second connects to the available IDE cable inside your PC computer.
Advantages of using Laptop to IDE hard drive adapter:
Fast data transfer rate. If you have a Ultra ATA/100 (UDMA/100) laptop hard drive, the data transfer rate will be 100MBs.
Disadvantages of using Laptop to IDE hard drive adapter:
1. Not for novice users. Requires PC disassembly and hardware configuration.
2. Can be connected only to PC computes.
On the picture below you can see how the adapter is connected to a PC computer.
How to recover data from a laptop SATA hard drive.
A SATA hard drive has a different interface. It has a data connector and power connector.
A laptop SATA hard drive also can be connected to an external USB enclosure. Make sure to choose a USB enclusure for 2.5″ SATA hard drives.
If you are using an external USB enclusure, the data transfer rate will be limited to the speed of the USB port (480Mbps or 12Mbps) even though SATA hard drives has transfer rate 150MBps.
For a faster data recovery I would suggest connecting your SATA hard drive directly to the SATA ports inside a PC computer. Fortunately, you can use same type of cables as you use for regular 3.5″ desktop hard drives.
My next post explains how to recover data from a laptop with crashed OS.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
I tried connecting my hard drive via the enclosure as you did and it worked but I got a problem. When I tried accessing my files it said “Access denied”.
I didn’t know what to do but after searching on Google found the soluting.
You have to take ownership over files on the hard drive as it explained on Microsoft site: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308421
Good luck!
June 4th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Andrew, thanks for the tip. I’ll mention that in the tutorial later.
June 4th, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Is there any particular enclosure brand you can recommend or they all kinda similar?
I’ll try data recovery for my friend. His laptop stopped booting at all.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Is it necessary to set the laptop harddrive to slave when using a desktop? Will the computer try to boot to the new harddrive?
June 24th, 2009 at 11:08 am
David,
If you are connecting the laptop hard drive to the same IDE channel with the desktop hard drive and the desktop hard drive is set to master, you’ll have to set the laptop hard drive to slave. If your desktop uses cable select technology (master and slave are recognized by the position on the cable), most likely you will not have to change any settings.
In order to set the laptop hard drive to slave you’ll have to use a jumper (it’s smaller than regular desktop jumper) and short pins as it shown on the hard drive label.
Yes, it might attempt booting from the laptop hard drive. Check the BIOS settings and make sure the desktop hard drive is still the main boot drive.
I would recommend connecting the laptop hard drive to a separate IDE channel. If you have a CD/DVD drive connected to the second IDE channel, unplug it temporarily and connect the laptop hard drive instead. In this case you don’t have to change any settings on the laptop hard drive.
June 25th, 2009 at 4:08 am
Hi
I’ve got a 2.5 sata drive but wondered if I could use the same cables as shown to connect it up internally on a desktop to make it a secondary storage area?
June 25th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Pete,
You can do that. Just use same type of cables you used for the desktop hard drive. You’ll have to find a way to mount the laptop hard drive inside the desktop case, but other than that there shouldn’t be any problem.
June 27th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
First of all,sorry for my english. I will try to explain my problem as well as possible. I use the first method that you explain . I am NOVICE woman in this subject. When I connect the usb to the laptop, what I am supposed to see in the laptop screen? I do not see anything. The only that I see is a green light in the iDE converter.
June 27th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Midny,
It depends. Do you have any data on the laptop hard drive or it’s empty?
Go to My Computer. Can you see the external hard drive in there?
June 27th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
No. Only when I plugged it, indicated that there is a new hard drive. I am not sure how can I determine if the laptop is read all the information of the external hard drive. The only that I can see is a light that change from green to red constantly.Due that I should remove the converter connection manually, I am afraid to remove it because I can think that can damage the USB of the laptop. In addition, I am not sure if I am supposed to plug both “heads”of USB . Let me explain: the USB cable that I received with the converter has two “heads” in one the sides.
Thank You for your help
June 27th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
I do not answer your first question. Yes I have data in the hard drive.
June 27th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
As I stated previously I am a NOVICE. Later for 30 minutes the laptop indicates that the device is ready to use. I check on MY COMPUTER as you suggested and it indicated DVD ram Drive; and when I check the properties read: use space 0 bytes free space 0 bytes. Does that means that the hard drive is damaged?
June 27th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
How the brackets can interfere with the hard drive content?
June 27th, 2009 at 10:56 pm
Migdy,
If your cable came with two USB heads on one side you have to plug both heads. If you use only one of them, the hard drive will not get enough power. Plug in both ends and see if it fixes the problem.
June 27th, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Migdy,
It’s not the drive you need. You have to see another hard drive, similar to your C drive.
As I suggested in the previous comment, connect both USB heads.
July 2nd, 2009 at 8:25 pm
[...] you are trying to get access to a portable 2.5″ (laptop) hard drive, here’s how you can coonect it to another laptop or desktop computer. July 2nd, 2009 [...]
July 10th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Hello,
I got a failed Dell Inspirion E1707 SATA hard disk drive, which means I got the Blue Screen of Death (BSD) every time I tried to boot. I bought a SATA to USB2.0 adpater kit and hooked to one of my vista desktop machines. But I got the error message, “The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.” and could not access the files I want to recover. Well, I am at a loss at this point. Please let me know if there is other ways to recover the data from my failed drive.
Thanks for the help in advance,
Mark
July 10th, 2009 at 9:52 am
Mark,
You can try accessing data on the hard drive with Knoppix (Live Linux CD). I haven’t created tutorial for this procedure yet but I will in the near future. In some cases when Windows fails to read the hard drive, Linux can do that.
1. Download the latest version or Knoppix (.iso file) and burn it on a CD or DVD (depends which flavour you download).
2. Boot your desktop from that CD.
3. Plug in the external enclosure into the USB port and if the hard drive is still in a good shape it will be detected by Knoppix. The hard drive icon will pop up on the desktop. Click on the HDD icon and see if you can access your data.
4. If you can access your data plug in a USB flash drive (has to be formatted with FAT32). The flash drive will be detected by the Knoppix same way as the hard drive. Right click on the flash drive and make it writable.
5. Transfer files from the hard drive to the flash drive.
July 16th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Mark,
From Disk Management in windows, find out it the drive has been assigned a drive letter. If it has been assigned a drive letter, right click on the drive, select Properties,, then click on the Tools tab, Click “Check now” in “Error-checking”, select both “Automatically fix file system errors” and “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors”, wait for it to complete. Depending on the size of the Hard drive and condition of the file system, it could take up to a couple of days.. After it complete , test to see if you can access the data on the drive. If not, you will have to pay a hefty amount to data recovery service. I recommend Ontrack , which is 1 of the best and had been around forever. Ontrack is also certified by manufacturer to not void valid warranty .
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/
I believe the evalution cost is about $200 and the evalution fee could be apply to the recovery service if you decided to go with the recovery.
July 16th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
krzys,
I agree, Otrack is good but their clean room recovery service is very expensive. Could be a few thousand dollars.
If you decide to recovery data yourself, try Runtime Software. It does very good job and cheap.
July 18th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
krzys & Recovery Guy,
Hey guys, thanks for the help. I had to be out of town on a short notice in the last week, so I could not get back to your responses. I tried what krzys suggested with the disk managment tool today, but got an error message, “The Disk Check could not be performed because Windows cannot access the disk.” I am gonna try out what Recovery Guy suggested as a next step and will let you know what happens. By the way, I was wondering whether I can make my failed laptop SATA drive as a second drive on my SATA based desktop machine and boot it from there to access the corrupted laptop drive. It used to work in the past time to time with EDIE drives in this method. But I am not sure whether it will work with SATA or not.
Mark
July 20th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Mark,
There is no question that you can take the hard drive out and hook it up as a secondary HD in your desktop and try.
There should also be a HD diagnostic utility in the BIOS(computer setup) that you can access to test the HD.
If it were me, the next thing that I might try would be PCInspector File Recovery. to see if I could recover files(make sure that you are recovering to another HD.
http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1
It is a free software.
The next step would be Ontrack EasyRecovery Pro. This is not a free software.
Not that I am recommending the following but I have also heard that the following might help:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiren%27s_BootCD
If the HD indeed have hardware problem, there are a couple of things to try.
If the controller board, the circuit board has problem, you can try to swap in a circuit board of another HD of the same model to see if that works for you.
If it is a minor head crash, hook it up to inside a desktop, slightly tapping the drive while the drive start spinning to make sure that it spin up alright might help.
the next step resort to putting the HD in a zip lock back, seal it and put it in a freezer over night, try to hook it up the next day , leave it inside the bag to minimize condenzation. to see if you have any luck. I had had succed with this. It would just be enough time to copy the data off the drive.
If all these fail, you have to go with the more expensive route of Data recovery service.
I have gone through all these before.
Best of luck
July 20th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Hiren’s Boot CD is a very useful diagnostic CD. It has a lot of tools. I’m using this CD almost every day.
I would be very careful with that. I believe replacing it with a new controller from a similar hard drive is not enough. The new controller must have the same firmware version as the original one or there is a chance to ruin the data. Just my $0.02
July 21st, 2009 at 7:18 pm
Hey Guys,
I booted my laptop from the Knoppix bootable CD and hooked the HD as USB drive. After recognizing the drive, the OS complained that the NTFS file system is corrupted, so I ran the “NTFS fix” command on the shell and tried to access to it. But it then asked for mounting NTFS volume. I am trying to figure out the mount command now and will try to access to it. If this does not work, I will try other methods that you guys recommended. In my opinion, I don’t think my physical disk drive is bad. I believe the BSD is caused by corrupted Window registry since the OS seems to recognize the drive and the total size of it. Anyhow, thanks for all the tips. I keep you posted what happens next.
Mark
July 22nd, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Where can I purchase the exact same IDE Connector for the Laptop Hard Drive with the Power Cable & the HDD Activity Light ?
July 23rd, 2009 at 12:08 am
Joe,
Search on eBay. I linked to the page with adapter in the post.
July 26th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Hey Guys,
I was able to recover all the pcitures of my 10 months old girl from the failed drive. With Knoppix OS booted from, I did NTFS fix and force mount commands and saw the Windows directory on the drive and copied the data to my USB thum drive!!!
Thanks for all the help. This is really a great site when it comes to recovering the lost data on troubled drives.
Mark Kang
August 24th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Hello,
When I try to boot up my Toshiba P200, I come across the following message from the Windows Boot Manager:
=======================
Windows has encountered a problem communicating with a device connected to your computer.
This error can be caused by upplugging a removable storage device such as an external USB drive while the device is in use, or by faulty hardwae such as a hard drive or CD-ROM drive that is failing. Make sure any removable storage is properly connected and then restart your computer.
If you continue to receive this error message, contact the hardware manufacturer.
Status: 0xc00000e9
Info: An unexpected I/O error has occurred.
=======================
Please help!! I hope my HDD data is still intact
.
Many thanks in advance.
August 24th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
Aries,
Can you boot in Safe Mode? Press F8 as soot as Toshiba logo appears on the screen, select Safe Mode and press Enter.
Can you boot to the desktop this way?
August 25th, 2009 at 1:33 am
i am trying to recover photos from my laptop. The laptop will not boot up Windows XP. I have a ide connector which i connected to my PC. The PC has Windows Vista installed. The hard drive does not show on my computer but i can see it on disk management but all options are greyed out except delete volume and help!
any ideas?
The hitachi hard drive does not have jumpers and so is ide master, the pc hard drive is sata. maybe that is causing a conflict. i will try and buy jumper and make ide hd slave to see if that will remedy situation
August 25th, 2009 at 11:42 pm
petrocles,
Apparently the file structure is corrupted. You will not be able to access this drive from Windows. You have a chance to get you pictures back if you use special data recovery software, for example GetDataBack for NTFS from Runtime Software.
September 17th, 2009 at 10:18 am
I have a Toshiba mk4025gas hdd2190 f ze01 s hard drive that I have tried to use the usb to Ibd, but it won’t recognize it. I know it works from other laptop hd’s, but i really need to files off of it. I can hear it spinning up so I know it’s not the motor. I was told the PCB might be fried and to try replacing that first, my concern is does that works? or is it a waste of time?
September 17th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Tom,
Are you trying to access this hard drive in Windows? Can you see the hard drive in the disc manager?
September 18th, 2009 at 12:30 am
the external monitor functions but there is no image on the notebook LCD panel
September 18th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Felicia,
What is your question? It doesn’t sound like you have a problem with the hard drive.
September 24th, 2009 at 9:43 am
Recovery Guy Says
Are you trying to access this hard drive in Windows? Can you see the hard drive in the disc manager?
Recovery guy,
I have tried to access the harddrive in Vista and windows. I can see it but the second i click on it, the working icon appears and won’t access anything, it just times out.
Tom
December 11th, 2009 at 9:43 am
hi-
I salvaged the hard drive from my smashed Toshiba computer, bought a 3 in 1 Drive adaptor, and have it connected to my new computer using the device. I need to extract my old data from the drive and put it on my new computer. it recognizes the drive and attempts to open it….and gets about 95% of the way there on the progress bar…but never succeeds in opening any data. what am i doing wrong??? any input would be greatly appreciated!!!
Emily
May 14th, 2010 at 4:04 pm
Don’t you have to make the drive a slave?
How do you make a SATA drive a slave?
May 15th, 2010 at 10:41 am
Sue,
There are no Master/Slave settings for SATA drives. The drive detected by the computer automatically (if the drive is working of course).
May 19th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Felicia,
What is your question? It doesn’t sound like you have a problem with the hard drive.
October 15th, 2010 at 7:37 am
I have a failed laptop (Acer running XP Pro)
The disk is OK; and I have removed it and can read most files, no problem.
However one folder I cannot read, although i can list the files.
That folder was secured by changing its priveleges on the laptop to give access only to the owner, laptop administrator account, and backup operators.
I */appear/* to be able to change the ownership and security priveleges to that of the Administrator account on my other machine (Win2000) but I still cannot read the files.
Any suggestions?
November 21st, 2010 at 11:44 am
The power connection pins broke off and the data pins are bent is there a way to fix this hard drive or get the data off of it I appreciate any help you can offer
Thank you
Hank
November 21st, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Hank,
I really doubt you can fix it at home. I guess you’ll have to use clean room recovery service. Check out DriveSavers.
December 16th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
Would these instructions also apply to an Apple laptop?
February 8th, 2011 at 11:50 am
I have a SATA hard drive that was in a Dell lap top and the laptop is no more, but I have the hard drive. I am trying to read the drive on another computer with the use of a USB enclosure. It is telling me that I have 0 available and 0 stored. I understand Dell has a security on their drives is there a way to retrieve the information? Thanks.
February 18th, 2011 at 10:04 am
Frank,
No, usually Dell laptops do not have any security enabled by default.
What operating system you had installed?
February 28th, 2011 at 4:05 am
This really helped! (thumbsup)
A small advice:
If you are buying case for laptop HDD, see what kind of connector cable it uses, because HDD needs enough power and single USB port provides only up to 0.5 A max! (could save you some headache)
I bought enclosure with a small short cable (~5 inches) and it works fine, but if I use longer cable to extend the reach, the cable eats up power and HDD won’t work. The solution for longer cable would be so-called Y-cable, which plugs into 2 ports and draws power from both ports (0.5+0.5 A = 1 A as it says on HDD), but I guess it’s not that common to find in store. Sometimes the cable is already made like that, be sure to check web pics of the case model you gonna buy).
I successfully rescued data from dead laptop and had no problems accessing data on it (NTFS, has admin password, but no encryption/protection on My Documents folder, you mileage may vary).
November 2nd, 2011 at 9:51 am
Not sure if this is still open, but with my Toshiba Tecra A8, it crashed, I reinstalled XP and can now get into safe mode. It tells me the Windows is not registered, and when I click on yes to register it stalls the puter. If I click no, it logs me off. In safe mode I have retrieved everything except “My Safe” contents. It is a secure area evidently not accessable in safe mode. For safety/security! I am at a loss. It accepts my fingerprint to get into the system, but won’t let me register it now or later, so I cannot get into it in regular mode. It is maddening! Any suggestions would be great. If I pull the HD and connect to another computer, will it do any good? Will I be able to get any further? I have some pretty critical data in my safe, hence it’s in the safe. But it won’t let me in. You can email if you like, I will follow whatever suggestions you have. Thanx so much for your time and talents.
Jeff
December 27th, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Thanks, I have Toshiba Satellite A305-S6843, using last 4 years and had no issues till recently. Laptop started shutting down in middle. Your website http://www.irisvista.com/tech/ helped me disassemble and clean the heat sink and fan assembly. The pictures and directions helped me lot and the laptop running without any heat related problems and I recommend using these instruction and pictures. Though, there are one or two pictures or different to my model on heat sink, overall very help full. Thanks for your website.
January 15th, 2012 at 9:00 pm
Need help! I have a Seagate Momentus SATA 7200 RPM 320GB laptop hard disk drive that failed on me about a year ago. I have been trying awhile now to recover some videos of my kid’s sporting events over the years which reside on this failed hard drive. I am using a SATA / IDE to USB 2.0 Adapater, but have been unable to see the contents of the failed drive on my good laptop when I connect the failed drive to it through the appropriate USB port. I can hear the disk drive running when I turn on the SATA / IDE adapter, however, my laptop it is connected to doesn’t see it. Any suggesstions? I am a little computer savvy, but this issue is really got me dumbfounded. Any help is appreciated. Thanks
July 7th, 2012 at 10:38 am
hi i have deleted some pictures n vedios which was very important is dere any way to recover those vedios n pictures frm dell laptop with windows seven …plz sugggest
July 8th, 2012 at 11:03 am
@ preeti,
Normally I use GetDataBack software to recover deleted files. This software has “deleted files scan”.
You have to use the right version, there are two different versions for NTFS and FAT file systems.
August 8th, 2012 at 2:54 am
i have a laptop hdd how to make it into a portable hardrive without buying anything
August 17th, 2012 at 12:07 pm
HI I believe my hardrive is corrupted but I am a novice to this , so I am not sure, all I know is I can not get past the system repair (which fails everytime) and gives me a blue screen with error code 0x00000f4. I dont have the OS cd , which I plan on order to reinstall everything but I am scared to lose all my babys pictures. is this what I should do to transfer them to my PC? will it transfer over a virus and corrupt the pc ? Any help is greatly appreciated.
September 1st, 2012 at 12:59 pm
I had plugged my pc to laptap adapter in wrong and damaged the logic board on my laptop hardrive.
I waited on ebay until a hard drive with EXACTLY the same numbers and manufacturing date (within a month) as mine became available and (bid through the roof) bought it.
I transferred the new logic board to the damaged drive and it worked, I could read my drive again.
The warning is to use this as a recovery method only, then retire the drive as it may become undependable.
To fix, get a new drive same size and CLONE it, and use the clone only. Copying is not the same as cloning.
November 18th, 2012 at 12:03 am
In the SATA drive image above, What is the other connector called? You have labeled the Data & Power but what is the (4) prong connector?
April 7th, 2013 at 8:23 pm
I have taken out SATA harddisk (the one which was having problem) & inserted new good SATA harddisk. Also OS is installed & laptop is working fine. If I want to recover data from old SATA harddisk, then can I connect it using USB adapter & use Knoppix way to recover data?
May 21st, 2013 at 3:56 pm
Hello- I need help with a SATA laptop hdd. I pulled off the plastic around the connector. You know how older IDE hdd’s had a removable plastic adapter? I thought that’s what it was. Anyway, I see no way to put it back, although it’s not broken. If you (or anyone) has ANY suggestions, or would like a pic, please email me. Cocoa2424. Gmail. Thanks in advance.