IDE 2.5in. to 3.5in. converter

[rasputin]

whats happenin everyone.

im a new member of this forum so this is an official hello, greetings
how are ya, etc.

now down to business.....
My client wants to run his pc off of his laptop harddrive which wa
recovered from his laptop. he purchased a IDE 2.5in. to 3.5in
converter which allows you to do such a configuration. upon boot, POS
generates a disk error along with a needs BIOS error. i havent looke
at the pc yet but, are bios needed for such a setup? i mean hi
mainboard is not very old, maybe 2-3 years it has a pentium 4. any hel
would be greatly appreciated. i love you guys :') sniff sniff peace lov
and monkey blood

arbito

 

[Ghostrider]

whats happenin everyone.

im a new member of this forum so this is an official hello, greetings,
how are ya, etc.

now down to business.....
My client wants to run his pc off of his laptop harddrive which was
recovered from his laptop. he purchased a IDE 2.5in. to 3.5in.
converter which allows you to do such a configuration. upon boot, POST
generates a disk error along with a needs BIOS error. i havent looked
at the pc yet but, are bios needed for such a setup? i mean his
mainboard is not very old, maybe 2-3 years it has a pentium 4. any help
would be greatly appreciated. i love you guys :') sniff sniff peace love
and monkey blood

arbitor

Generally, if the bios does not support the parameters of the 2.5-inch
laptop hard drive, then it will not recognize it. One should check the
details of the bios updates for the PC for compatibility. And, at the
very least, attempt to have the bios automatically detect the laptop's
HD.

 

[Paul]

whats happenin everyone.

im a new member of this forum so this is an official hello, greetings,
how are ya, etc.

now down to business.....
My client wants to run his pc off of his laptop harddrive which was
recovered from his laptop. he purchased a IDE 2.5in. to 3.5in.
converter which allows you to do such a configuration. upon boot, POST
generates a disk error along with a needs BIOS error. i havent looked
at the pc yet but, are bios needed for such a setup? i mean his
mainboard is not very old, maybe 2-3 years it has a pentium 4. any help
would be greatly appreciated. i love you guys :') sniff sniff peace love
and monkey blood

arbitor

The IDE adapter, would convert from 44 pin 2mm centers IDE (laptop)
connector, to a 40 pin 0.1" centers connector. There would be a
Molex power adapter as well, because the 44 pin end has a couple pins
which carry power to the tiny hard drive. It uses +5V at around 0.5A
or a little bit more. So you have to connect the Molex power plug, to get
some power on the 44 pin end of the adapter.

(44 pin side visible, 40 pin is the gold pins, Molex for +5V power)
http://c1.neweggimages.com/NeweggImage/productimage/12-203-012-02.jpg

If you examine the laptop drive, there may be a separate group of
pins intended for a jumper block. Perhaps 4 pins. Those pins may
set the "Master/Slave/Cable Select" mode of the drive. If the
2.5" drive is on the same cable as some other hard drive or optical,
then you'd want to check that out. You may need to add or remove
a jumper. The jumper type would likely be 2mm and smaller than
the jumpers you'd use on a 3.5" drive.

I don't know what the "needs BIOS" means. What kind of PC is this ?
An ancient Compaq ?

Paul

 

[kony]

whats happenin everyone.

im a new member of this forum so this is an official hello, greetings,
how are ya, etc.

now down to business.....
My client wants to run his pc off of his laptop harddrive which was
recovered from his laptop. he purchased a IDE 2.5in. to 3.5in.
converter which allows you to do such a configuration. upon boot, POST
generates a disk error along with a needs BIOS error. i havent looked
at the pc yet but, are bios needed for such a setup? i mean his
mainboard is not very old, maybe 2-3 years it has a pentium 4. any help
would be greatly appreciated. i love you guys :') sniff sniff peace love
and monkey blood

arbitor

If you have confirmed that the adapter does have the
required power lead plugged into it, that the drive does
have the jumper set correctly (if needed, if it is instead
the only drive on the end of the IDE cable then the
jumpering it used while in the laptop should be ok still).

Next check the bios settings, to set this drive as the boot
device the system should use. That might be why it has a
"disk error" but the exact wording of the error messages
would help. The "needs BIOS" error is unusual, for the
moment I would ignore it as it might be a throwback to the
days when a system would display a message like "no rom
basic" if it didn't have a bootable OS installed.

However, on this note does the drive have a bootable OS
installed still? If it does, look at the bios settings for
which boot device the system should use and set it to that
drive. If it does not have a bootable OS on it at present
then you need to instead set the system to boot to some
other device, like the optical drive (with your bootable OS
installation disc in it) so you can then proceed to install
the OS.

Since (Windows for example) some OS don't seamlessly run
when their installation is moved to a different system, you
might want to do a clean OS installation regardless of
whether there was one present. Also since this is a used
hard drive, it seems prudent to download the hard drive
manufacturer's (bootable, typically some kind of DOS
environment) utility disc to check the drive, including
doing a surface scan of the drive before trying to install
an OS to it.

Unless this system your client has is deliberately designed
to be very tiny, hence the goal of using a smaller form
factor laptop drive, otherwise I would advise against using
an old laptop drive as it is going to be MUCH slower than a
cheap new desktop drive. For example an old 20GB HDD is
roughly only 1/3rd as fast as a modern generation 320GB HDD
that can be had for about $75.

 

[Joel]

whats happenin everyone.

im a new member of this forum so this is an official hello, greetings,
how are ya, etc.

now down to business.....
My client wants to run his pc off of his laptop harddrive which was
recovered from his laptop. he purchased a IDE 2.5in. to 3.5in.
converter which allows you to do such a configuration. upon boot, POST
generates a disk error along with a needs BIOS error. i havent looked
at the pc yet but, are bios needed for such a setup? i mean his
mainboard is not very old, maybe 2-3 years it has a pentium 4. any help
would be greatly appreciated. i love you guys :') sniff sniff peace love
and monkey blood

arbitor

*If* I am not mistaken, 2.5" and 3.5" hard drives have 2 different type of
connectors for both hard drive and power (I only installed three 2.5" hard
drives to 100% sure). But I know for sure your client should be able to use
as external hard drive (with external enclosure)