Member Avatar for logan_657

My girlfriend's Panasonic Toughbook's (laptop) internal hard drive up and failed out of nowhere today. She doesn't back up, so all her music, documents, etc.. is on that drive.

Is there a way to hook up her HD to my PowerBook (just as an external HD) in an attempt to salvage any data possible? We are more interested in getting the data than any other thing caz it also include some important company data in which works

Assuming I can get the HD out of her laptop, how would I go about hooking it up to my PowerBook as an external drive (I have a 200GB LaCie FW HD, so maybe I could just swap about the drives?) If it successfully mounted on my desktop, would I be able to just drag and drop files from her HD to my HD? I realize the disk needs to spin on both HD's for this to work, so I have my doubts, but I've gotta try something

or maybe there is an easier way?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by gn0m3

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Quick, safe plan for and anyone else who finds a suddenly “dead” laptop disk: treat the drive as fragile evidence rather than a spare disk. The priority is to get a reliable image (bit-for-bit copy) of the failing drive to another drive and work from that image. If the drive is making unusual noises (clicking, grinding, not spinning) stop and consult a professional data-recovery lab — DIY attempts can make a mechanical failure irrecoverable.

Step-by-step workflow to try yourself (low-risk, logical-failure cases):

  1. Identify the drive type and power needs before connecting (2.5" laptop drives are often bus-powered; 3.5" desktop drives need an external power brick). Use a powered USB-to-SATA/IDE adapter or a powered enclosure so the disk gets stable power.
  2. Never agree to initialize, repair, or reformat the disk when a system prompts you. That will overwrite metadata and reduce recoverability.
  3. Check whether the OS even sees the device (macOS: diskutil list; Linux: lsblk or sudo fdisk -l; look at dmesg for device errors). If the disk appears, copy only essential files first (if directory listing is stable) or, preferably, make an image.

Imaging example (recommended — avoids repeated stress on a failing drive):

# find disk (macOS)
diskutil list

# first-pass clone with GNU ddrescue (adjust device and paths)
sudo ddrescue -f -n /dev/rdiskN ~/toughbook.img ~/toughbook.log

# follow-up to retry bad areas
sudo ddrescue -d -r3 /dev/rdiskN ~/toughbook.img ~/toughbook.log

Work from the image, not the original. After imaging you can mount the image or run file-recovery tools (TestDisk/PhotoRec or NTFS-aware tools) to extract files. On macOS the built-in NTFS support is read-only; do not enable write-to-NTFS drivers against the failed source.

When to stop: persistent read errors, repeated head parking, clicking, or failure to spin indicate mechanical trouble — those are job for a clean-room lab, especially for irreplaceable company data. For future: set up automated backups and verify them. Several posters here (, , , , ) mentioned adapters, recovery environments, and shops; the safe sequence above prioritizes imaging first and professional help when noise or repeated failures appear.

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Member Avatar for kevin_476

Well if you get her HD out, you would need an external HD enclosure to plug it in so you could connect it to your Mac to start with... And depending if it is formatted in FAT32 (you can read and write to it) or NTFS (read only) you get different results... But the start point is to get an enclosure to contain the HD... Don't neglect the possibility that there might be a Windows-specific way of dealing with this. I.e. ask on a Windows-related board, take the machine into a Windows shop, or just to your nearest Windows expert. Oh!!! I forgot to tell you. U can also try data recovery labs. One of the lab that I know is SAlvageData Recovery Lab Inc. I would suggest to give them a shot…If you wish you can call them at 1 203-973-0242. I hope you get your data back.

Member Avatar for DemonicGoldfish

If I were you I'd go to a reliable repair shop - they might be able to recover it. But then again, I don't know much about HDD data loss...

Member Avatar for kenjutsuka

What you need is one of these...

Member Avatar for gn0m3

try booting up off a live cd and saving the data to an external source. I use Knoppix and it works great!

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