Can I use a 2.5" Laptop HDD in a desktop?

[Mike_117]

I have an old laptop that took a crap on me, and it has a 1 tb 5600rpm hdd in it. It appears to have the same connections as a normal 3.5" desktop hdd. Can I just hook it up like a normal hdd? the power specs on the laptop are 5V and 0.85A.

 

[B-man33]

Hi, yes you can if the connections are similar to your desktop PC's HDD's like you have mentioned, I once added a much smaller HDD to my desktop PC which I got from a touch panel which was operating windows XP Embedded I believe it was called, it was super slow and eventually took it out because of it being very slow, the one you want to add from the Laptop might not be that slow and might work perfect for you tho

 

[Gingerbread]

Yeah you can. It works the same way, only difference is that 2.5" HDDs are a bit slower since they are smaller so that they can fit in a laptop. Also they are a bit more expensive but besides that they operate the exact same way as the 3.5" HDDs found in traditional desktops.

 

[utroz]

Yes. It will work perfectly. In an older case you might need drive rails to allow it to fit into a 3.5in bay but most modern cases have bays for 2.5in drives (hard drives, SSDs, ect). Laptop drives tend to be a little slower but they also use less power. You can usually tweak the drive settings to speed them up (I have done this many times).