Want to copy my laptop hard drive before I start to play with it. What sort of gizzmo do I need? Is it just a simple socket on a wire that plugs into my desktop or it it a whole bundle of little boxes which only a teenage can work? the laptop is playing up and being tight I'd happliy have a go myself than pay some one else to tell me its totally knackered. Also this doesn't seem to be an isolated case and maybe the gizzmo would be used again. What do I need?

You need to make a bootable backup on an external drive.

I have a Mac and use SuperDuper but you could try this thread fro PC-based equivalents:

http://alexking.org/blog/2007/02/10/windows-backup-software

S.

What are you backing up? An external drive should just plug 'n' go, no faffing required. If you're formatting and rebuilding then the easiest way is the Transfer Wizard (it comes under different names in different versions of Windows), or just copy and paste your My Docs folder if you're just bothered about saving pics / docs etc.

You're wanting to remove the drive from the laptop and plug in to your desktop so the desktop can see and copy the files? That's what I just did, and I got this SATA to USB caddy which worked just fine and was very easy to use. Obviously only any good if the HD in your laptop is SATA – otherwise I presume you can get similar things for old fashioned IDE disks.

thats it aracer.
a caddy is what they are called is it. Now how do I know the difference between SATA and IDE? on it or can I assume that my 05 Dell is one or the other?

IDE uses a 2" wide data cable, SATA is about half an inch.

if you want to make an exact bootable copy of a hard drive Acronis True Image is good.

Or Ghost

I'm not usually a fan of Norton but Ghost worked well for me when doing this.

TrueImage and an external drive of some sort are all you need.

You can buy a new hard drive and a caddy to build it into*, or you can buy something like this: Hard drive holder

Disconnect the power, remove the battery and take out the hard drive- you'll then be able to tell what type of drive you have/need. The different interfaces for SATA and IDE ( also known as PATA ) can be seen in this picture:

* which can later be used to hold your current hard drive

that's a handy pic. likely for your dell it will be the one on the RHS, however the laptop HDs i've seen come in a little enclosure – 4 screws to remove the drive from this, then a connector fitted on to the hard disc's own connector, which you simply pull free. use a flat bladed screwdriver to lever this off bit by bit if you like. that should reveal a connector like the one pictured.
the four or so pins extreme right of the picture above will be for jumpers – if you're using an adaptor forget about them. just be careful that you orientate the connector so that the missing pin ( bottom row in the shot above ) is in the right place. 😉