question about hard drive plugs

[dkvice]

I have a 2.5" hard drive that I pulled out of my old dead laptop and I would like to throw it into the computer I'm building, but the plug going from the hard drive to the motherboard is much too short for a tower. I've looked around, and I believe the connection type is called ide. The hard drive has 41 pins for a plug in. The plug in for the laptop was a ribbon, albeit a small one. My question is twofold: When I look for a plug, am I looking for an ide to ide, or do current motherboards need an ide to something else? Second, does it have to be a ribbon, or will a wire work?

Thanks everyone.

[The Professor]

Hard drives either take IDE or SATA. There is no such thing as IDE to something else. IDE is both sides which is 40 pins. or Sata which look like a mini USB sort of thing.

IDE: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812200039

SATA: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812200050

[vesseblah]

Search Newegg for "ide to sata" and you come up with plenty of choices -> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...NG&PageSize=20

Sadly most of those are for 3.5" drives, if you want to use the old 2.5" drive you need a -> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...CE&PageSize=20


If you want to actually use the old disc for something it's not really recommended as it will be probably very slow compared to modern 3.5" SATA2/3 HDDs. On the other hand if you need to recover data from it, then getting the adapters from links above is the best way to go and don't cost that much. I'd go for -> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817182145