Reddit reviews C2G 30504 Cables to Go USB 2.0 to IDE or Serial ATA Drive Adapter Cable, Black

Your best option will probably be to get some sort of adapter that will let you hook the laptop drive up to your PC (or new laptop) via USB. There are hard drive docks that support both desktop and laptop sized HDs that are very easy to use, such as this:

http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Duplicator-Function-EC-HDD2/dp/B00IKC14OG

Or, there are cheaper options such as this adapter:

http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S

Once you hook your old drive up with something like that, you can just copy your files over like copying from any other folder on your PC to another. Good luck!

Trying to repair it as an external drive is likely to fail. You are far better off getting something like this.

http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S

or

http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Adapter-Converter-Optical-External/dp/B001OORMVQ/

Or you can just open up your computer (if it is a tower, not a laptop) and install it inside.

You can pick up an "External Hard Drive Enclosure" or some cables like this :
http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S/ref=sr_1_49?ie=UTF8&qid=1311887400&sr=8-49

It basically lets you hook hard drives up to a USB port on another computer and use it like an External Hard Drive.

Make sure you know what kind of hard drive you have and that whatever you're buying hooks up to it (IDE / SATA). Google the model of your drive to find out what it is.

That's an IDE drive. All you need is an external USB adapter and you'll be able to access it. Here's an adapter from Cables-To-GO that's a good choice because it will work with old IDE drives like that, but will also work with new SATA drives. That way you're not buying something that only works with old drives.

http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377704869&sr=8-1&keywords=usb+drive+adapter

Attach this to a file server. No need to make things complicated.

Something like this makes it way easy:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UO6C5S/

If they're all SATA then just get one of these for the cheapest route:

http://www.amazon.com/Patuoxun-Converter-Adapter-Cable-Drive/dp/B008ASF5MC/

Could be a dead HDD, or could merely be a loose cable/mount. It should be easy to access the HDDs under your laptop. Check for loose cable and if it still doesn't work remove the drive and check it using a SATA-to-USB like this if you can.

Similar to this: http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417501902&sr=8-1&keywords=usb+to+ide+adapter

Obviously if you're looking to mount the drives inside you'd have to wire up a hub inside as well.

Honestly, IDE drives are so out of date you're not going to find any larger products like that which supports it. The best you can hope for is an adapter that does a single IDE drive like this: https://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S/

Honestly, if it were me, I'd move that data to another drive, and then trash them and get something like this for sata drives: https://www.amazon.com/Inateck-Dual-Bay-Function-Tool-Free-FD2002/dp/B00N1KXE9K/

Remove the drive and attach it to a working computer using something like this.

Something like this will also let you transfer the data, you will need to remove the harddrive from the old laptop and plug it into the adaptor and connect the USB to the new laptop.http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S/ref=pd_cp_pc_3

I used to use two machines that that had SATA and PATA between them. Any SCSI drives I had where wiped by the servers that housed them. Although these days I only just use whatever machine I have laying around to wipe the SATA drives and use a USB adapter for any other drive types.

Yes it does take a while to wipe drives like this, but It is totally a background operation. It was about 15 minutes of work to setup each run with four drives in a PC and then about 5 minutes afterwards to verify the wipe was complete and document everything. You can speed this up of course by using multiple machines to wipe the drives (just be sure to disconnect system drives so you don't make more work for yourself).

Also one pass is enough *souce for most applications, so that should speed things up even more. We still do a 7 pass wipe, due to a policy I can't get changed...

We use DBAN for all of our wiping needs.

No you aren't SOL, just order an new laser on Ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/301841300184?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT and buy an IDE 320GB from Ebay:http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nice-320GB-IDE-3-5-HDD-Maxtor-MaXLine-Plus-II-UDMA-133-5400RPM-2MB-5A320J0-/262422608633?hash=item3d199b3af9:g:E1MAAOxyOlhS-~yv

I buy Maxtor II versions, usually around 20 bucks. You can copy your already ESR patched games to the HDD following a tutorial I made which I will link, or you can buy a connectivity kit to directly connect the HDD to your PC via USB and copy the games you download right onto it with winhiip.

Link to cables http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

I've boughten cheaper version off of Ebay and it ended up not working. This one was linked in another ps2 thread and I can verify it works great.

Tutorial to put already ESR patched games onto your hdd with hdloader :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgtG-54x8mQ

This is the truth, I do PC repair as a side-business, this: http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S - Has made me a savior to people who thought their data was gone forever. Go for this version over the cheaper ones, the power supplies are where they cut cost, and that makes them horribly unstable. I've had no problems with the Cables to Go model.

If you have access to another computer, you can use something like this to pull the data off the hard drive.

EDIT: someone else already suggested this

I have an old hard drive with hundreds of old pictures and movies on it from my childhood, but when I try to plug it in with an adapter, the hard drive doesn't boot. No sound, no clicking, no lights. Nothing. This worked perfectly fine for an identical hard drive, but this one had no luck. What can I do in this situation?

This one works, I use it with my Plextor external IDE:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UO6C5S/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

My most wanted item is this or this because my external enclosure died, and it had some important files (wouldnt really call it WORK WORK, but i was working on something for someone)

(I hope I didn't break the rules by linking two things, they're both Essentially the same thing and around the same price so if I win, pick either one)

PS I like the use of the word pizzazz, not enough people use it.

Sorry, you'll have to buy another adapter like this.

do you mean like one of these? http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1375568887&sr=8-2&keywords=sata+usb

I have an old laptop hard drive i'd love to recover the data from.

Live CDs

• Hirens Boot USB (and CD)
  
• Kaspersky Live CD
  
• Trinity Live CD
  
• Clonezilla Live CD
  
  Other Utilities
  
  
• System Ninja
  
• McAffee Remover
  
• Task Manager Fix
  
• Unhide
  
• ForceWindowVisible
  
• WhoCrashed
  
• Fix IE
  
• MS System Sweeper
  
• Trojan Remover
  
  Hardware
  
  
• USB to IDE/SATA adapter
  
• Netbook running Mint Linux
  
• 1TB clean HDD
  
• Screwdrivers
  
• Mini flashlight
  
• Air blaster
  
• USB and ethernet cables
  

I can vouch for these cables:
http://www.amazon.com/Cables-To-Go-30504-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S/

I've also used the toaster, both are great.

Something like this might work, but make sure it has the right number of pins for IDE, because floppy drives use different cables from hard disks:

http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1377223337&sr=1-1&keywords=usb+ide+cable+adapter

Which Mac? If you can get the hard drive out you can do it yourself on a friend's computer with something like this.

https://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S

Sure there are plenty. This one works also offers USB it seems so you wouldn't even need to open up your case.

http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S

Yep! This one can connect IDE and SATA drives to USB: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000UO6C5S

Looks like you will need an IDE to usb adapter.

clumsy but couldn't an external drive be powered externally but have a Serial ATA to USB conversion cable of some kind?

http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-30504-Serial-Adapter/dp/B000UO6C5S

I just did this. Cost me about $30 after shipping and handling.

You'll also need a program to make an exact copy of your drive (known as cloning). I used XXClone. It didn't copy the boot manager for some reason, but I had my Windows 7 install disk and chose the repair method which fixed everything.

I copied approximately 134GB of information which took almost 2 and a half hours (although I also watched a movie on my computer and browsed Reddit.) I don't think using your computer really harms the copy process (I'm currently using my new cloned hard drive to type all this out and I've had no problems).

You don't need the same capacity drive although the target drive does need to be large enough to hold all the information you're transferring.

All of this is if you're doing it yourself. The more you do it, the more the cost decreases per cloning due to your ownership of the USB to SATA cable.