Hi everyone, I am interested in making a mobile hdd recovery laptop I can bring with me to customer sites.

Does anyone know of a quick and easy way to connect an IDE/SATA drive to a laptop via some connector commercially available? A USB caddy wont work for obvious reasons.

Why wont a caddy work or even the customers home computer..? as in home data recovery is only going to solve basic problems anyway.

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No problem if you use one of the newer Laptops with a SATA /eSATA connector for external HDD.

For Laptops without that its possible:

1. If internal CD/DVD is old IDE conntector - there exist bays for 2nd IDE-HDD instead of the internal DVD
- you could use extension cord connected into such a bay plus an external power adapter for an external
HDD plus adapters for 2,5" to 3,5" and/or IDE to SATA converter - whatever necessary

2. If internal CD/DVD is a SATA connector - there exist SATA+power cable extensions.
But for 3,5" drives you definitely would neet extra power adapter
For IDE HDD you would need additional SATA to IDE converter

If its about time - spent at the customers office - there is only one tool I am aware of to
cover your request (professionally): Atola Ethernet

No doubt, its not that small tool - and one of the expensiver ones - but:

- connectable via the ethernet port to the laptop
- you may connect source and a target HDD directly to that tool
- you are able to image at maximum speed from source to target
- you have a full range of tests available
- you can repair FW of a wide range of HDD
- you can access files of found ntfs partitions to recover them

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Thanks falther! I dont know why I didnt think of this. I ordered the drive caddy and the extension cord.