internal to USB external question

[CMC79]

I'm trying to help my brother, but I'm can't see what he's got and I'm not terribly experienced with what he's looking at. He bought a kit to convert his 40gb ide 2.5in laptop drive from his old HP, and he says it doesn't look like that cables match up to his drive at all. I know the kit he got is for a 2.5in drive, so it's not that he bought a 3.5. Any ideas what his problem might be?

 

[stogez]

Maybe he bought a SATA kit for an IDE drive or vice versa? If the laptop is fairly new then its most probably a SATA drive.

 

[Zepper]

Some older laptops put their HDDs in an enclosure or frame that adapted the HDD connector to a printed ribbon cable connector or some other type of connector to make it easy in/easy out. Is his drive in some kind of enclosure or connector adapter frame like that. OTOH, if he bought an external enclosure for a 2.5" SATA drive, the connectors are entirely different so he'd have to send it back and eat the restocking fee. As you say, hard to tell at long distance. Tell him to take it to someone with a webcam on his confuser so you can see the drive and enclosure if he can't finger it out...

.bh.

 

[CMC79]

I looked up what he bought--he didn't get a SATA enclosure, so I know it's not that. The drive's from an older laptop--mobile athlon xp 2500 from several years ago. It's a 4200RPM IDE drive, 40gb. I'm not sure about the frame, but that sounds plausible. Was this something that HP did routinely?

 

[Zepper]

I know IBM and Compaq did it - Compaq is part of HP now - I haven't disassembled any HPs that I can recall anyway. He'll need some jeweller's or technicians precision (like jeweller's but longer w/ plastic handles) screwdrivers to remove the enclosure/frame if it has one.

.bh.