On Wed, 2009-05-27 at 10:16 +1200, Bruce Kingsbury wrote
No - it's a whole different connector - narrower pin pitch than IDE. and these are pins sticking directly out of the end of the case. I don't know laptops, so I'm unsure whether this is a Toshiba proprietary connection, or some kind of 'mini-IDE'.
Laptop drives have a mini-ide which is very standard.
I have a USB drive adaptor which takes 3.5" IDE, 2.5" IDE and SATA drives, and I've done recovery jobs in the past. Feel free to give me a call if you like, 8551826 and I'll see what I can do.
Thank you so much everyone for your replies. The disk had a few lucid minutes today, sufficient to boot the laptop and allow me to mount the disk remotely and back up the vital directories. *phew* !! Cheers David