Travel Technology - Laptop HD pinouts

I'm junking an old Gateway laptop. It has a 20g hd in it, and I thought it would be a terrible thing to waste. I have a couple of desktops that could use it for auxilliary storage.

It has something like 44-48 pins on the back -- I assume it's the standard IDE 40 pins plus power. Is there a standard for this, or does every laptop manufacturer define his own?

There is an adapter for this. Fairly common.

-JC

I'm junking an old Gateway laptop. It has a 20g hd in it, and I thought it would be a terrible thing to waste. I have a couple of desktops that could use it for auxilliary storage.

It has something like 44-48 pins on the back -- I assume it's the standard IDE 40 pins plus power. Is there a standard for this, or does every laptop manufacturer define his own?

It's 44 pins, standard. Go down to a place like Fry's and you'll find a little gadget for something like $5 that takes a standard IDE cable and a standard power cable and plugs in the laptop drive. It's little more than a circut board with pins on it.

Note that laptop drives are slow in comparison to desktop drives.

Beware that the ones I have seen were wired backwards from convention. It didn't do any harm to anything when I plugged it in backwards, however. Squint hard enough and the pin markings could be made out.

Here is a mail order outfit that has one:
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=HD-108&cat=CBL
for $3.75, including mounting brackets, not sure what the hit for shipping will be.

Beware that the ones I have seen were wired backwards from convention. It didn't do any harm to anything when I plugged it in backwards, however. Squint hard enough and the pin markings could be made out.

A quick word of warning. I have 3 dead laptop drives I killed by plugging the 44-pin in backwards. Another possible good use is a small USB and/or 1394 case tha accepts the drive. This gives you a 20G mobile drive you can take on the road or use with most desktops. The downside is a possibly slightly lower transfer rate.

A quick word of warning. I have 3 dead laptop drives I killed by plugging the 44-pin in backwards. Another possible good use is a small USB and/or 1394 case tha accepts the drive. This gives you a 20G mobile drive you can take on the road or use with most desktops. The downside is a possibly slightly lower transfer rate.

Good point - the 2 1/2" drive's IDE connectors are not keyed. Match pin 1 (red) on the adapter and drive and you'll be OK. Also, *some* of the adapters aren't keyed on the other (large) side either - again, match pin 1 (red).