Last March my friend accidentally dropped her laptop off of the bed causing it to land on books and thus rendering the screen useless. She wanted to just toss it but I told her to keep it so I can use it for parts. I eventually purchased an external hard drive enclosure so I could salvage her hard drive and rescue her files. I used the knowledge that I've learned in school to take the back of her laptop off and carefully extracted her drive then opened the case and very carefully slid it in so all of the contacts touched. Last step was to attach the USB cord to my laptop. It lit up and my laptop read it perfectly. Her hard drive lives!