I recently received a Dell Inspiron One 2305 all in one computer with a failing hard drive. This customer had a spare Serial Advanced Technology Attachment hard drive from a laptop with a potentially bad motherboard. I am going to describe how I remove hard drive from laptop and install it into this all in one computer.
First of all make sure you are dealing with a laptop hard drive with SATA connectors. The old desktop hard drive was a SATA type. I removed the cover from the old hard drive.
There were four screws I had to remove. Out came that failing SATA hard drive. The mounting holes on this SATA laptop hard drive did not line up on this cover.
This cover was not solid and had, what I assume where airflow holes. I decided to use some of these airholes to mount this laptop SATA hard drive. The screws that came with this desktop SATA hard drive were too wide for the mounting holes on the laptop hard drive.
I found some thinner screws that fit the mounting holes on the laptop SATA hard drive. However, these screws kind of had wider tops but these screws actually fell threw these airholes if I positioned them correctly. I found some other screws that were wide enough on the top that they would not fall threw.
My point in all this is you want to find screws that are wide enough at that top to cover the hole, so that they don’t slip through. I wanted to make sure that this laptop was secure and would not move around. You can check out my featured image to see what I am talking about with regards to these screws.
I was able to mount this SATA laptop hard drive in this cover close to the opening hole to connect the SATA power and data cables. There are mounting kits available that are designed to get installed into 3.5 inch hard drive slots in desktop computers. However, I was able to mount this SATA laptop hard drive without a mounting kit.