Reading a laptop hard drive

[Auroous]

I purchased a Sata to Sata cable to read my laptops hard drive from my PC. Where do I plug the other end into to read it on my computer. I have a lot of Sata ports on my mother board but I am not sure which one will work

 

[SchizTech]

Any SATA port should work. You'll also need to plug in a SATA power connector from the power supply. Make sure the PC is turned off when you connect or disconnect the drive!

 

[Auroous]

Any SATA port should work. You'll also need to plug in a SATA power connector from the power supply. Make sure the PC is turned off when you connect or disconnect the drive!

I have it plugged in, I can feel the hard drive working but I don't have any new disks coming up on my computer

 

[SchizTech]

Since the cables seem to be routed behind the board you might have to re-route a cable. The tip would look like this:

http://zoobab.wdfiles.com/local--files/atx-psu-breadboard-mod/sata-power-connector.jpg

It's the same connector as the desktop SATA drive. If you don't need the DVD-ROM (if you have one) during this process, you might pull the power cable off there.

 

[Auroous]

I have it plugged in, I can feel the hard drive working but I don't have any new disks coming up on my computer

 

[SchizTech]

What do you see in My Computer? If it's not there, look at disk management. If you have Windows 8, you can get there by right-clicking in the bottom left corner and selecting "disk management" from the menu. If it's Win 7, right-click Computer in start menu and click Manage, then go to Disk Management.

If you restarted with the drive in, it won't pop up though. Open My Computer and check there first.

 

[bigwoofer]

Have you connected the DIFFERENT sata power cable to the laptop disk? Your pc will require 2 cables to power the drive: Power and SATA

Also was the hard drive the MAIN hard drive in the laptop with a password required to access the user profile?