Date: 03/14/05 (Computer Geeks)    Keywords: yahoo, google

 I have a laptop hard drive that I've been holding on from when my older compaq presario 1200 gave out, and lately I saw a 3.5" to 5.25" IDE adaptor online, and I bought it in hopes of getting the data off of the old laptop hard drive. ...except um, I'm not sure where Pin 1 is on the laptop hard drive. There are four pins off on the left, and then a lot of pins on the right. There is one pin missing on the bottom row of the side that has a lot of pins.

 I've heard that laptop hard drives get their power and i/o from the cable that connects it to the motherboard, so I don't want to risk assuming the laptop hard drive is like a normal 5.25" hard drive (which always have pin 1 and 2 closest to the power input). I looked around on google and yahoo for a few hours with the keywords "3.5" hard drive, pin settings" or "3.5" hard drive, pin numbers" but all I was able to learn was that the four separate pins are jumper pins.

... So umm.. on a laptop hard drive, where is Pin1?


PS - is a 3.5" to 5.25" adapter stable enough to be used as a long term set-up? (as in, would I be able to use the laptop hard drive like a normal 5.25" hard drive once I have it set up correctly?)

Source: http://www.livejournal.com/community/computergeeks/634383.html