Broken USB cable: easily fixable?

Rhesus Positive

My girlfriend's portable hard drive is currently borked. The USB connector has started to come off where it meets the wire. The one repair shop I took it to said that the company that makes the hard drive don't supply the cables seperately (it's a fancy retracting one) and fitting a third-party cable would be a much bigger job, costing £50 or thereabouts.

Is this accurate? Is it that tough to reattach or replace a male USB connector? Or could I find a repair place to do it for cheaper?

We don't care about replacing it exactly, we just want it to work again. I've fixed broken wires before, but obviously a USB cable is a different kettle of fish.

LaPuzza

Not what you're asking, but it may be easier to put the drive in a new enclosure than to rewire a USB connector.

MKR

It would be really weird for a USB device manufacturer to come up with some kind of proprietary connector. Are you sure it's not one of the standard connectors?

If it's standard, you can just buy a new cable.

Bowen

I mean, it's really not hard to fix broken wires with a little electrical tape and soldering (hell you can even just twist the bundles half the time). You of course run the risk of damaging your hardware with it. You may want to just take apart the unit, get a normal USB cable ($5 at like wal-mart), and see if you can't just replace the cable internally in the device and feed it through the "retracable" cable hole.

jclast

There are (I think) only 4 sizes of USB connectors. Unless they came up with something proprietary (the old 360 MUs come to mind) you should be able to look at the shape and buy the type of cable you need. Obviously, to hook up to a PC you'll want Type A on one end (I don't think I've ever seen one that didn't have that, but you never know).

EDIT: Commonly type A is for PCs. Type B is printers. Mini-A is phone/camera chargers. And Mini-B is random equipment (I know that's what the PSP uses, for example). I might have the 2 minis mixed up though.

Bowen

Mini-A,B,Micro-A,B are all used on mobile devices like that now. It's really random which one uses what.

AtomBomb

LaPuzza wrote: »

Not what you're asking, but it may be easier to put the drive in a new enclosure than to rewire a USB connector.

Yeah, just pull the drive and drop it in a $10 enclosure, or however many £ that is.

The Crowing One

AtomBomb wrote: »

LaPuzza wrote: »

Not what you're asking, but it may be easier to put the drive in a new enclosure than to rewire a USB connector.

Yeah, just pull the drive and drop it in a $10 enclosure, or however many £ that is.

This seems the simplest of solutions. Cheap and easy.