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If I use a hard drive adapter as suggested, such as this one: “Newer Technology Universal Drive Adapter - connects ATA/IDE/SATA to USB2 - 2.5”, 3.5", 5.25" Drives", do I still need an enclosure? I need to retrieve data from a computer that won’t boot up due to a bad board. Can I do this using only the adapter and connecting it directly to the computer leaving the hard drive in the computer, OR, do I need to remove the HD, put it in the enclosure and then connect the adapter to the enclosure? In summary, my mission is to get the data off the Macbook HD of the computer that won’t boot up and transfer it to a new Macbook. Will this scenario allow me to accomplish this, or is there another way to best do it? Thanks very much!!

Keep in mind you have (2) problems when you disconnect a drive and try to attach it to another system:

  1. getting the data bus wired correctly
  2. powering up the drive so the platters spin and the heads move. You must understand whether your adapter covers only number 1) above. But, if you already have a complete enclosure, it should provide both a data path and power to the drive you insert. Does your enclosure have only a USB cable coming from it? I would guess that it also has some power going to it as well. Otherwise you will only be able to operate on rather small amount of power provided by your computer’s USB port, insufficient to spin up a drive. The thing to understand here is that you should be making (2) connections to the drive itself, 1 for data, 1 for power. This may not necessarily mean that there are 2 plugs - there are connectors/drives where data and power are combined into a single strip of pins. Then it is up to whatever OS is on the computer you are using as the repository for your recovered data to recognize the USB <-> ATA/IDE/SATA device and the HFS format on the drive. I have done this before, but its been a while. The USB <-> ATA/IDE/SATA adapter is confusing things and adding an extra layer of complexity, but sometimes thats the way it goes. hope this helps to some degree

I use the Newer Tech adapter daily. Hook it up and start up holding down the the option key and select the external drive if it has a system on it. If no system then you need to install one. Hook the drive up, insert your system installation and start up holding down the “C” key. Format and install a system on the external. Next do the option thing, use Migration assistant and move your data from the internal to the external if you can access it.

There is a great deal of enclosures out there, so not sure which one you are referring to. Any 2.5inch SATA external USB or Firewire enclosure will work fine, (firewire 800 if your moving a great deal of data + firewire has some extra options for a mac based computer). Something with firewire and USB may be best if you are planning on using this for different platforms and functions. These enclosures can be had on newegg and USB only models quite cheap on ebay. Based on your question this is prob. the best way to retrieve your data from a non functional computer. (mounting the drive an an external, it will appear as a normal external drive so file permissions etc should not be an issue).