Quite recently my laptop stopped working altogether. The laptop would boot but I could not see anything, the whole screen turned blank. I tried every trick in the book, but could not get it to work.

Now the only options I had were:

1. Get a new laptop
2. Send the laptop to an authorized service center for repairs

Both these were fine, but I still had important data in my laptop, most of which was backed up, however some of it was more recent and was not backed up.

Now, I am bit paranoid about sending my laptop with a hard drive filled with important and sensitive data to a service center, and since the laptop did not display anything I could not even get it on a network. So how did I manage to recover data from the laptop? Keep reading to know more.

Recovering Data from Laptop Hard drives

Unlike desktop hard drives, laptop hard drives are directly attached to the laptop. You can recover data from a desktop hard drive by taking it out and connecting it to another desktop by using a data cable.  However, the same is not possible with laptop hard drives. Thankfully, there are other ways to recover data from laptop drives.

You will need to purchase an hard drive enclosure for your drive, so that you can attach it to it and then use it as a external hard drive on another computer or laptop. These external enclosures are easy to use and can fit most of the 2.5drives that laptops carry.

However, you need to first check what type of hard drive your laptop uses, most newer laptops uses SATA drives, so you would need to get a SATA to USB enclosure, there are also other types of hard drives, like IDE drives.  You can heck your laptop specifications to find which one is used in your laptop.

Use the links below to search and buy external enclosure for your laptop drive.

• 2.5USB 2.0 enclosure for SATA drives
• 2.5USB 2.0 enclosure for IDE drives

Removing Hard Drives from Laptop

Removing hard drives from a Laptop is pretty easy, all you require is a screw driver. You can search the Internet and find tons of tutorials on removing the hard drive from your laptop.

However, there may be some minor difference between different laptop models. There may be slight differences for the same laptop manufacturers, so look out for them. Here is a video tutorial on how you can remove a hard drive from your laptop, there are several related videos which you can watch.

Convert Laptop Drives to External Hard Drive

Once you take out the hard drive from your laptop, you can insert into the external enclosure. Make sure to follow the instructions provided with the enclosure.  Once that is done, you can then plug the USB cable into another computer or laptop and backup your important data.

I recommend you actually backup your important data to another computer, and then delete it from the drive before sending it to any service center.

Extra Storage

If you plan to throw away your old laptop, you can use the above instructions and get yourself additional storage for a small cost. Most laptops usually come with 120 GB hard drives at the least. You can use that 120GB additional storage for as low as $10.

So make sure to pull your old hard drives out and use them as storage space. Don’t forget to format your drive before you use it as an external drive.