Recycle a laptop hard drive

I guess I ran my Gateway laptop into the ground. Considering it was on 7 x 24 for about 2 years, I suppose I shouldn’t complain. So, do I just give a respectful memorial service and then dump it or do I hack it up for parts? I’ll give you one guess on that one… ;>)

The Gateway had a nice 40GB drive that was roughly half full. Most of the data on it is my music collection; I’ve ripped all of my CD’s to the Gateway only to then move the files to my Dell DJ. I would love to get at those files again, though and not just the music; I had bunches of data like old e-mails, contacts, etc… on the drive. Since the laptop drive is a standard 2.5″ sized drive, I picked up an aluminum hard drive enclosure with USB 2.0 at my local CompUSA for $20.

Here’s what you need:

1 Hard Drive enclosure kit, 1 very small Phillips head screwdriver, 1 inquisitive 7 year old son (optional),
30 minutes.

Read More for the simple steps involved.