question using 3.5 hardrive in laptop

[rjd66]

I have a laptop and I want to check if the harddrive in it is broken(as the system wont start up) but all I have is a 3.5 desktop hardrive and no money at the moment to buy a 2.5 drive to replace the laptop harddrive and dont want to buy a 2.5 if thats not even the problem. My question is can I hook the 3.5 harddrive to the laptop using sata cable and power the harddrive using an extra power supply I have. Thanks for any answers in advance

 

[mbarnes86]

Hi

you would need an extension cable for the sata data cable and a power supply ment for a 3.5" hard drive usb to sata adapter

laptop 2.5" drives use 5 Volts while 3.5" drives use 5V & 12V.

The easiest way to test the hard drive is to boot up the laptop using a hard drive diagnostic cd
most hard disk manufacturers have them on their web site

seagate version works on other brands
Western Digital data lifeguard for windows works on other brands

Hirens Boot CD has both of the above and more available
some laptops have hard disk diagnostics buit into the BIOS or as a program on the recovery partition

regards
Mike Barnes

 

[rjd66]

Thank you I did not know there were programs I could use on boot up to test the harddrive. Do I just put those programs on a dvd and have the system boot from the dvd drive?