Hi everyone.

Sorry If this is a confusing question, but I've managed to fall down the stairs with my laptop in my back pack, and now when I boot the computer I can hear that it starts running, but nothing happens on the screen.
So I was wondering if I take apart my computer and remove the harddrive, does there then exist a device I can place it in and plug it via USB to an other computer, and read the data that way.

Or is there a better solution?

Thanks in advance, and sorry if it's an silly question.

Nick Madsen

take it to a computer repare place

USB won't work, but most laptop drives I've seen have an adaptor that plugs into the mother board. Remove this adaptor and underneath is a standard SATA connector and power connector. Use these to plug the HD into a desktop PC using a regular SATA cable and it should show up on your machine as a second drive.

I do this frequently to help people retrieve data off their drives before they are returned to the manufacturer for exchange.

I agree with Dave... another thing you can do is plug your laptop into a monitor. When this happend to my mom (her laptop screen shattered) we were able to see if it still worked and then did what Dave suggested

Actually, DaveV is wrong.

You can get cables that will plug right into the harddrive then go to USB, you can also get docks, where you just plug the harrdrive into the dock, and plug that into your computer thru USB.

Cable: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/ ... CatId=3770

Docks: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/ ... kwCjCECjCE

Most up-to-date computers can hold at least 4 hard drives, but because it's a laptop, and because I'm not so familiar with laptops, I'm not sure if they work the same.

If it was a desktop, essentially, you could connect the HDD to another computer (via direct input), and then see the files on that drive. And then copy them to an external hard drive or other storage device...

Wrong? I don't think so. I thought I was wrong once... but I was mistaken.

Of course there are docking adaptors. I didn't say there weren't. All I meant was that they won't work directly. Typically you don't need to go to all that trouble if you have a computer with a spare SATA port as many laptop drives are SATA already.

Okey doke. But you said, "USB won't work," which, infact, it will.

Thank you so much everyone!

It was a thing like that I was hoping exist.
I thought about plugging an external monitor to my laptop, but the last time I did it, you have to go through some Graphtics Control center, and set which monitor you want to use. But I'll try to get a hold of one of those Sata/USB cables and save my data.

Thanks again!

UPDATE:
I just found a SATA/USB external case for 2.5" hard drives (the size used in laptops)

Now I carry one in my car just in case I need to swap drives and they want to keep their data.

The best part? Under $10