Attach a laptop HD to a desktop PC?

[RayB]

Is there such a device what will let me take a laptop's harddrive and attach it to a regular tower PC?  (Laptop is dead and I need to copy stuff off the harddrive + wipe it clean before selling)

[Hoopz]

Yes, you need a hard drive adapter.  Find the size (dimensions) for your laptop drive and Google it.  I bought one a couple months ago that connected a 2.5 inch hard drive to IDE.  It was about $8 or so.

You connect the adapter to an IDE cable and the hard drive connects to it.  Pretty simple.

EDIT:  I'm getting an error trying to post the pics.  Here's the link.

http://www.ebest24.com/en/35-inch-ide-to-18-inch-hard-drive-adapter.html?language=en&currency=USD

[ahofle]

IMO everyone should own one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

[knave]

IMO everyone should own one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

I've been using one of these for a while now and it is great. I use a 500gb sata drive for all my backups.

[RayB]

Thank you for the links 

[Ummon]

I just have all my computers on a network, though my back-up is slave on my gaming computer. Of course, it's only slightly more convenient in a situation like this.

[richms]

I got one that came with a power brick that has a molex on the end of it which is great - has sata, small and large pata plugs on it - there was a molex to sata lead as well but I think I repurposed that somewhere else...

Anyway, watch the transfer speed of these - I had one before it which was so slow and ground the PC to a halt with full cpu on one core when in use...