hi all my laptop has just give up on me. And i know it was my windows (dodgy) that caused it. So now i need to know what the device is called that you can hook any hard drive up via usb to use it as an external drive so i can get the information off the laptop drive and others i have from past computers. Hope this makes sense

Hi, we have cases to put laptop drives into so that you can connect them to USB ports, £10 (SATA or IDE)

If you just need a connector for a SATA drive we might have a spare one you can have, but you'll need a Mini USB cable for it.

Thanks doc don't even know why i posted a new thread for this should have just asked u but what i'm lookin for is somethin that i can connect normal pata, sata and laptop drives to using usb a bit like the memory card slot av got on the front of my comp

This can be done, I've just recovered 160 GB worth of Info from a dead hard drive. similar to what the Dr says to do.

My desktop PC died a few months ago, so I'm now using a Laptop, I bought a 500gb hard drive & Caddy to transfer the data from the old HD to this new one. When I connected it together the laptop saw the HD but would not access it it said "H" needs formatting before using it I said no I asked around at work someone suggested Recuva Recovery Software.

I D/L it installed it, and when opened it saw "H" and let me access it hours later I had recovered 95% of my old drive.
I already had my documents & all my photo's backed up via Live drive so they were safe, It was loads of music etc I wanted to recover

Just saving up for my new desktop.

You can get an external caddy for SATA drives that is hot swappable (no need to turn your machine off), for IDE (PATA) you might want to.

It sits on your desk and you "drop" the drives into it, turn it on and it shows up on your PC as a new drive.

Price for that is around the £40 for one that isn't going to fail after a few weeks.

If you want to do everything then an external housing for a 3.5" drive will comfortably take your normal 3.5" drives, laptop drives will connect to it (SATA ones, you'd need an extra adapter for laptop IDE) but they will be loose inside so don't move it around.

Price for something like that is around the £20 mark.

Thanks for all the info guys.