I have an old laptop that no longer works but believe that the hard drive is still intact. I want to extract some data from this onto my new laptop but have been told my an expert that there is no cable to connect a laptop hard drive to another laptop. (I know I can do it with a desktop PC to a laptop but I don't have a desktop PC available.) The guy in the shop said I could just switch the hard drives (ie remove the current one and put the other one in) but one is an Advent laptop the other is a Dell. Could I do this? I don't want to start messing around with hardware as things tend to go wrong when I do that! I suspect that the 2 hard drives are different sizes and Advent one won't fit in the Dell but the guy in the shop said it would be ok.

Any advice or alternative suggestions appreciated.

I use EZ-Gig for this type of situation. Its a PCCard controller where you extract the old HD out of the dead laptop and put it into the HD encloser that comes with the kit. On every Windows system I have used this on the EZ-Gig is recognized...Drive may be dead, but the controller is still usable and can be a diagnostic too.

Basically, the Two laptops HDDs can be removed. Take a small philips or whatever type is needed and removed the HDD Carrior from the dead laptop. When the carrier is removed, unscrew the HDD from the carrier then put into the EZ Gig encloser, plug in EZ Gig and viola!

If your Old laptop boots, but the is no response from the HDD, that may be a dead HDD. Remember, this is a suggestion. I have recently lost my XP Laptops HD and used my EZ-Gig to diagnose if the drive is truly dead, or just faking (Its dead...wont even spin up!)

Good advice - I would have said a similar thing. I suspect that the EZ Gig method is the cheapest/simplest solution. An alternative would be to buy a USB external drive enclosure, which is intended for 3.5" PC hard disks. Then buy a 3.5" to 2.5" adaptor (the cable that allows you to run a notebook hard disk inside a desktop PC - this should also work in the external enclosure). Boot up and, if all works as it should, you should see the external drive listed in Windows Explorer so you can still boot from your Dell hard disk but you can read the files off of your Advent disk if it's still alive

Thanks for the tips. Can anyone tell me how much an Ez Gig is? And also where can I get one? (I'm in UK)

Its an Apricorn product. I can only find US sites (I'm in the US) but here is the link to the kit:
http://www.apricorn.com/shopping.php?ID=160