Best way to check contents of a laptop hard drive?

[CKDragon]

I got these two "Amacom Flip Disks" from a discard pile of parts at work. They're external 2.5in./4200rpm/20 gig hard drives which attached via PCMCIA that did not have the necessary power cable.

I easily popped the cases open and extracted the 20gb drives. I see that a few drives of this model number have gone for $25-30 shipped on eBay recently so I'd like to just sell them and turn a bit of a profit. Naturally, first I better make sure there's no sensitive information on them.

What's the easiest way to hook a 2.5in. drive up to a desktop PC in order to check contents & format it? It looks like it uses a standard IDE cable but the power cable looks very different. All suggestions are greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[JackMDS]

You can get a 2.5" USB enclosure and test any 2.5" HD through a USB port.

 

[CKDragon]

Originally posted by: JackMDS
You can get a 2.5" USB enclosure and test any 2.5" HD through a USB port.

Thanks for the option. If that turns out to be the only way, I can manage it. I suppose I was hoping to put out the smallest amount of money possible since the goal is simply eBay profit.

Am I correct in assuming the IDE cable for 3.5 & 2.5 inch drives are the same? Is there some molex connector I can buy that will allow it to work with my existing PC power supply?

Thanks again,
CK

 

[ch33zw1z]

IDE cables for 3.5 and 2.5 are different. Pickup one of these instead, it will do everything you need: <3 mine

note: Plug power in first, then attach to the puter

 

[corkyg]

Those adapters are available to go both ways - PATA to SATA and SATA to PATA. They are almost an essential part of anyone's toolkit these days.