The Atlas hard disk McAllister checks on the laptop is a standard 2.5" model and the connector attached directly to the drive is a standard SATA connector. While you can attach the drive with a (e)SATA cable to the laptop, a power source would be needed for the drive to work. And in case of using eSATAp, an adapter for the hard drive would be required.
Simply cloning a hard drive bit by bit takes a couple of hours at most, depending on its size and transfer rate. Handing back the original drive gives no guarantee whatsoever the data on it wouldn't be decrypted later anyway.