ForumGarden

I have removed the hard drive from an old laptop which wont power up, with the intention of retrieving some data from it.

Do I need a caddy or will it connect directly to my present laptop ?

It depends on how old it is and what's on it.

Most laptops will only accommodate one disk at a time.

Laptop disks are usually 2.5" and come with two alternative connectors, the old IDE (sometimes called PATA or parallel) and SATA, the far faster serial interface..

If your newer laptop has the same connector then yes, it will let you power up the old disk.

Do you hear a but about to make an appearance?

I expect you have Microsoft Windows of some description on both your disks. If you take out the disk which knows your hardware and put in an old disk that doesn't know your hardware then I'm pretty sure it won't actually boot, it will hang while trying to bring in all its drivers.

I expect it will do that even in Safe Mode, though I don't know.

So you're a bit stuck. You can't boot off the newer disk and see the old data at the same time, and you probably can't boot off the older disk in the newer laptop.

A technician would put the older disk into the newer laptop and boot from a recovery CD, DVD or USB stick. That will let her see the older disk. It would be less problematic to get a laptop shop to do it for you but you'll need to haggle to get a sensible price from them, they're a shady bunch.

If the older disk has a different connector than your only working laptop that's the only option you'll have anyway, since you won't be able to start the older disk without a connector that fits.

You definitely don't need a caddy.

Its a SATA.

I had planned to simply (sic) retrieve any photos/videos etc, by connecting externally via either a caddy or if possible, directly via USB, ie, as an external storage system would be. I hadn't envisaged using it as a hard dive and using it's OS.

Simply moving a few files from the old to the new

One of these would solve your problem:

https://www.startech.com/HDD/Adapters/U ... SB2SATAIDE

Thanks all. Just ordered one from the devil for £20.00, delivered tomorrow.