Convert Internal Hard Drive To External

how can I connect the internal hard drive from my old broken laptop to a new laptop as a external hard drive? I hear that I need a kit.... exactly what is the name of the kit and where can I buy that from?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Ummm, did you read the article above before asking your question?

Hey I just purchased an internal EIDE Hard Drive from Western Digital with the intention of putting it in an external case. The case is from LaCie, and used to house an external hard drive that broke because the unit fell from my desk. I've put the new hard drive in the case, and plugged it in, XP (latest service pack) recognized it and installed it, but when I go to My Computer, there is no link to the drive. Device manager reports that it is in fact a drive on the system, but I can't do anything with it. I've gone to Control Panel/Performance and maintenance/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Removable Storage and it's not listed there.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Is the drive formatted?

Yea a friend told me to use a windows installation CD to format it, and let me use his desktop and that worked perfectly. Now it works in my external and I can access it through My Computer

Hi, I have a 3 year old Toshiba laptop that died on me(motherboard issue). I would like to get at the info on the harddrive(pics and music). Can I take it out and put it into an enclosed harddrive case and grab all the files that way. 2 questions. will I have any problems with there being a operating system on the hard drive? and the second question is it really that simple? Like do I just take it out, plug it in and hook it up to my other laptop using USB? Do you have any recommended links to show details of how this is done?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, it's just about that simple. Buy an external HD kit for a 2.5-inch drive. It will come with instructions.

I had an old MP3 player from years ago when they still used a laptop hard drive instead of the flash drive that is popular now. The MP3 player has since met it's maker, and I thought it would be a good idea to try and salvage the music from it, so I bought an enclosure kit for it. I went the "on the cheap" route and managed to find a kit for a mere $20. It did not have a jumper for the hard drive to make it a slave drive and also did not come with instructions on how to install said harddrive. It's not showing up in "My Computer" and I have tried to go to computer management to fix the issue, but nothing is working.
Please help! If it comes down to it I can format the drive, but I would really like to try and get my MP3's back...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Not sure if this is relevant, but the jumper would be on the drive, not the enclosure. Perhaps the drive is damaged?

My pc is effected by Ashan's virus or worm or mail ware. This virus changed major things like my computer, recyclebin & network place to Ashan's computer, G.W. Bush & Ahsan's Places respectively.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Trying to fix a virus infestation piece by piece will get you nowhere. You need a good anti-virus scanner and remover. See http://askbobrankin.com/should_i_buy_antispyware_or_antivirus_software.html

How do I reformat an old internal hard drive to use as an external hard drive? The drive was corrupted so I replaced it and I don't want to mess up my new drive trying to reformat the old one using the Windows CDs.

EDITOR'S NOTE: You could install it in the external enclosure, attach it via USB, and then right click on the disk icon in My Computer to access the Format option.

I've a laptop that runs Ubuntu booting via GRUB. I bought an external USB harddrive whose capacity is larger than the one on my laptop. I decided to take out the larger harddrive from the USB enclosure and swapped out the smaller harddrive from my laptop. After installing both WinXP and Ubuntu on the larger harddisk, I put the smaller harddrive into the USB enclosure. Both WinXP and Ubuntu do not detect a USB drive being plugged into the laptop. I've tried having it plugged before powering up, and I've tried plugging it in after the OS has properly booted up.

Does GRUB in a USB harddrive enclosure cause problems? How do I wipe out GRUB from a harddrive that is in a USB enclosure that is not being detected by WinXP and by Ubuntu?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Having Grub on a disk should not prevent it from being detected as a USB drive. Sounds like maybe the drive was damaged when you did the switch. Or possibly changing the jumpers (master/slave) might help.

I have recently converted a laptop hard drive to an external USB drive. It works fine. My question is can I safely remove the operating system from the disk? It is a small HDD and I want to maximize the amount of space I can use for storage. Could I just format the drive without any problems?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sure, you can format it and just use it for file storage. There's no need to have an operating system on the drive.

So what is the name of the part needed to use an internal hard drive as an external hard drive?

EDITOR'S NOTE: It's called an external hard drive enclosure, or a USB hard drive enclosure. You pop the drive into a little sleeve or box, connect the cables and plug it in.