For “advanced” users of personal computers and laptops, sometimes there is a need to transfer some data from the first device to the second. It is, of course, possible to find some kind of software outlet. For example, you can upload a large number of files to the cloud, and then it takes a long and tedious way to download them from it to a laptop. Or try in the old-fashioned way to upload information to a removable medium and also transfer it for a long time to another device. Long, uncomfortable, and boring, right?
As you know, within laptop hardware, operations are much faster than with externally connected devices. What if you take the HDD off your computer and want to know about ways How To Connect Hard Drive To Laptop? You can really cope with such a task on your own, but you should read the instructions on how to do this correctly and without prejudice to the devices.
Table of Contents
How do I remove a computer hard drive?
You don’t need to be an experienced system administrator to understand that to connect an external hard drive to a laptop, you need to remove it from a desktop computer. But the question is: how to do this, it still requires some knowledge.
A detailed guide on how to remove the hard drive itself from the computer:
- Turn off the personal computer completely and remove the plug from the socket.
- We remove the cover of the system unit, which gives us full access to its filling.
- Find the HDD (If you don’t know what it looks like, then we recommend first looking for this information on the Internet) and disconnect every single wire from the connectors.
- As a rule, the disc itself is mounted either on the grooves or on the mounting bolts, which must be unscrewed. After releasing, remove the HDD outside.
At first glance, there is nothing complicated in this procedure, but it was mentioned above that knowledge of computer circuits will be additionally useful here. This is not to remove the element, but on the contrary, to put it in place and it works again.
If such knowledge is absent, then you should not despair. You can just take a picture of the correct scheme before disconnecting or write it down in a language you understand in a notebook.
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How To Connect Hard Drive To Laptop via usb?
For uninformed readers, the following point should be clarified: the hard drive of a laptop and a computer differ significantly in size. It is obvious that a large hard drive from a PC cannot be installed in place of a small laptop device.
Naturally, technologies do not stand still and a special Box was invented for this case. They are of several types:
- 3.5 IDE to USB 3.0 – for IDE interfaces with increased speed over USB 3.0;
- 3.5 Sata to USB 3.0 – For SATA interface with similar speed.
As for unfamiliar words such as SATA and IDE, these are subtypes of hard drives. Before buying a contact box, you need to know the type of hard drive to be connected. Find out what hard drive was on a stationary computer – perhaps by examining it. This is written on a sticker with technical information, which is located on the body of the filling element.
Let’s go back to the connection. It is possible to connect a second hard drive to a laptop only through a special box. This container itself looks like a black box into which the original hard drive should fit. For SATA drives, it is slightly smaller than for IDE drives. There are also universal containers, but the price is much higher.
So, having such a box available, we insert the hard drive into it and connect the other end of the wire to the USB port. If he has a power supply, then we plug it into the network accordingly.
If everything went well, then the laptop should see the new connected device by standard procedure. But what to do if the laptop operating system does not detect it? In this case, you need to perform the usual recheck of the paired device in the device manager. Having found it in the start menu, you should open the “HID Devices” section and look in the list for a name similar to the name of the box. Most often this is a problem with the supplied software (drivers). If the icon shows a sign with a yellow exclamation mark, then you need to right-click on this device and click “update driver”.
It so happens that the problem of connecting a hard drive from a computer to a laptop through the box lies in the system name of the HDD. Here you need to get into “Disk Management” and look at the list of new connected devices. Some existing disk partitions in a laptop are probably named as the disk itself and they begin to conflict with each other. In this case, you must rename either the old hard drive or the newly attached device.
This method is considered the easiest but requires a Hard Drive Case.
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How To Connect Hard Drive To Laptop via a motherboard?
Another option for connecting a hard drive, but more “hard”. Here we have to deal directly with the motherboard of the laptop, and for this, we first need to get to it. There is nothing wrong, you just need to adhere to a certain algorithm of actions.
First, you should completely de-energize the laptop and wait until the operating system is completely shut down. It is advisable that the system be turned off not in an emergency way, but through the shutdown button in the “start” menu. Next, we open the battery cell, take it out and put it aside. Now we have to unscrew all the screws that secure the main cover of the bottom panel of the device and, when finished, remove this cover.
This will open a view of all installed hard drives in the laptop (one or two). They have the usual look of a stationary HDD but in a small case. To remove it, unscrew all the screws on the top cover and on it. If everything is done, then we next disconnect the connected cables and carefully, with a sense of proportion, remove the internal board from it.
Let’s move on to connecting the hard drive through the motherboard. Having previously prepared an additional SATA cable, we connect it with one end to the hard drive, and the other end to the outlet in the HDD slot in the laptop. If it is important to have one native disk on the laptop and you need to connect another one, then it may be possible to perform this operation only through an additional cell.
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The installation of the second hard disk is carried out according to the same instructions as the installation of the first one. Only after the complete connection of all components should be supplied to the device and turned on.
Conclusion
These are the options to Connect Hard Drive To Laptop. In this case, no special specialized knowledge is required. It is enough to have an idea of which side to approach the laptop and what to do in order not to harm the laptop.
