Scavenge Laptop HDD

[JAYuill]

I bought a dual 2.5" drive bracket for 3.5" drive with out realising my new SSD came with bracket. But then I had the strange idea.

I have 2 old laptops; an IBM Leveno T43(bought Augest 2005) and T60 (given June 2006)

Could I take the hard drive out of the laptops mount in bracket.

My main motivation for doing this that I have Software from when I was at university which cost £1000+

What are my Main hurdles?

I know I ned to give more details. I just want to know if possible as the laptops work sort of okay.

[xeromist]

Those are older laptops which means they will have IDE drives (PATA). If you need to access the data on them then you will need to buy a USB caddy that will support the older interface type.

[JAYuill]

I opened up the hard enclosures in the Laptops. the T43 is indeed a IDE how ever the T60 is SATA. I'm not sure what to look as some other places recommend a IDE to SATA converter. I was hoping to put the 2 hard rives in a caddy/enclosure. Will I notice any speed difference if I connect to eSATA instead of USB 2.0. The other thing is there were top range laptops with biometrics, hard drive shock detectors and a special security chip. Will I be able to run them outside the laptop?

[xeromist]

eSATA is definitely better than USB 2.0. As to the security issues, if the laptops used whole disk encryption then you may not be able to access anything. It really depends on how it was set up. If there was encryption of any kind then you will likely need the same decryption software installed as well as the key and encryption profile (type, strength, etc) to have any chance of reading it.

[Tech_Rat]

Another consideration is the OS being on them, it may confuse your boot up. If they themselves were secondaries, then it shouldn't be an issue at all. If they were primaries, you'd have to go the external route, and use file explorer(or a linux machine) to pull the data. Might want to put them back in their lappys and make sure to disable any securities(Anti Virus, biometrics, encryption) just to make it easier.

[xeromist]

That's not really a problem as long as you ensure the boot order is correct in the BIOS.

[JAYuill]

Hey, I've been looking into an external hard drive docking station. I found an interesting one by a company called StarTech.com but have not heard of them before. Does anyone have a good or bad experience with them as most of their stuff have mixed reviews. I was going to maybe get the dual slot one and maybe fit T60 laptop with new SSD. Also which SATA ports would you recommend me using for eSATA to connect to port on my case or use the rear mobo one (Crosshair V Formula + 2 optical SATA drives and 120GB SSD connected looking at adding more excluding the laptop drives)

[xeromist]

I'm not sure about that brand. If it looks cheaply made or has bad reviews then skip it. All of those reviews may be completely accurate but the company just has quality control issues. That means you roll the dice when you buy their product. It may work great or it may crap out 5 days after the limited warranty expires.

I don't understand your port question. If you're asking whether to use the rear eSATA or the internal ports it makes no difference in speed. Just use what works for you. For that matter these are older hard drives and likely 5400 rpm at that. They're pretty slow anyway.

[JAYuill]

Hey, Just a quick update. Got the HDD Docking station. Saw they had a newer USB 3.0 edition so got that instead of eSATA. First Hard Drive out of IBM Thinkpad T43 connect using metal dock adaptor due to IDE connections. Works fine, can access information and view like a slow external HHD.

Second hard drive which is SATA from IBM thinkpad T60, Less luck with this one, It is reading a blank hard drive with no partition. Connect back to laptop and all works fine. Therefore security chip is blocking me view of data. I'm not sure how to deactivate as the laptop is 6 years old and was set up for my University studies by my University which cause me no ends of problem. Most likely wrong forum to ask in.

[Myk SilentShadow]

My guess would be to put the SATA drive back into it's original laptop, boot it up and see if you can find a way to remove the security that is hiding the data on the drive. IBM's Forums would be a great stepping stone :)

[xeromist]

My guess would be to put the SATA drive back into it's original laptop, boot it up and see if you can find a way to remove the security that is hiding the data on the drive.

+1
The whole point of the security is to prevent someone from putting it in another machine and reading the data. Unless you have a decryption option to revert the drive to normal then I don't think you'll be able to do it.