Question: Would there be any problem connecting an internal SATA drive using an old PC Power Supply for its power and connecting to an external SATA port on a laptop? Would there be any voltage conflicts?
I just had a motherboard die and need to get some data off the hard drive. I don’t have another computer that I could just drop the drive into, but my laptop has an external sata port.
Answer: The easiest would be to buy or found an IDE/Sata to USB cable. They are plenty of them at various prices, I bought one for cheap on eBay. They usually come with an external power supply (with a Molex plug and a Molex-to-SATA-power adapter).
Here is an example:
Even without this and if you can use your power supply to deliver voltage to the SATA drive, I suppose your laptop has a eSATA port, not a SATA port. You’ll also need a eSATA-to-SATA cable then.