Damaged SATA drive?

RNEMESiS42

So, for the longest time, the SATA HDD that holds all of my mp3's and music recordings has had a broken input. I don't even remember how it happened, but the L shaped plastic thing that surrounds the gold prongs was broken off. If placed in a SATA cable, it could be easily lined back up with the drive (usually held with a bit of tape). This worked fine, until slowly the gold prongs started to break off due to stress from all the finagling I had to do. There are only about three and a half of those gold prongs left.
Here's a random SATA picture for reference:

BIG PICTURE

Recently it's stopped working all together. If it is plugged in it shows up in BIOS, but after the Windows loading screen it gets perpetually stuck on a black screen.

Is there anyway I can get my data off this? Will I have to send it away to a data recovery company? The drive itself is perfect, it's just the dumb input on it.

AtomBomb

There are quick fixes you might be able to do. There are more involved fixes like getting another similar model of drive and swapping parts. I'd have to see a picture of the damage to give any real help.

RNEMESiS42

Here are a couple shots:

RNEMESiS42

...bump?

Barrakketh

RNEMESiS42 wrote: »

So, for the longest time, the SATA HDD that holds all of my mp3's and music recordings has had a broken input. I don't even remember how it happened, but the L shaped plastic thing that surrounds the gold prongs was broken off.

Too much stress was placed on the connector. Newer cables have some "teeth" on the drive end of the connector (which is usually right-angled these days) to help reduce the odds of it happening, but if you put too much downward force on it they can still break.

Will I have to send it away to a data recovery company? The drive itself is perfect, it's just the dumb input on it.

Probably. It might not be too expensive unless they charge the same rate for every type of service, but they would probably replace the entire PCB on the drive to pull the data off of it. That would likely be beyond your capabilities, though if you hadn't gone so far as to damage those pins you probably could have just replaced the entire black part that supports the connectors.

eternalbl

If you're gonna be replacing the drive you could get the same model and then swap over the circuit board to backup the original, or just swap over the board and leave it at that.

AtomBomb

My guess is that the circuit board is still good. You could take apart a sata cable and solder it to the actual hard drive. Make sure you've got all your connections correct, plug it in and go.

If you don't have a meter to test which wire goes where, you could solder some little wires to the hard drive. You then cut the plastic of off the end on the sata cable so that the contact strips in the connector are exposed. You then solder the wires to each contact they are supposed to touch. Twice as much soldering, but less chance to mix up wires. If you don't have a soldering gun you could use hot glue or something, but it's a bit tricky to make sure that you have good enough contact on each connection. It can work though.

RNEMESiS42

I'm pretty comfortable with my soldering abilities, so I'd be down with soldering something directly to the board. I've never dissected a SATA cable before, though, so I'll probably have to experiment a bit before I do it. Are there any diagrams I should be looking at for reference? I don't have a voltmeter or anything currently.

Ruckus

RNEMESiS42 wrote: »

I'm pretty comfortable with my soldering abilities, so I'd be down with soldering something directly to the board. I've never dissected a SATA cable before, though, so I'll probably have to experiment a bit before I do it. Are there any diagrams I should be looking at for reference? I don't have a voltmeter or anything currently.

I'm pretty sure they're just 7 wires embedded parallel in insulation.

AtomBomb

Yeah, I believe Ruckus is right. I would just attach the wires to those exposed pads on the board. See if you can disect the sata cable without cutting it up. Disconnect one wire from the sata cable end, solder it to the board, disconnect another wire from the sata cable, repeat.

You don't really need to know if you're just copying, but pins 1, 4 and 7 are ground. 2 and 3 are paired as are 5 and 6.

Cycophant

It's rather ironic that I read this thread and then stumble across this article at Anandtech.com.

Alas, it doesn't really provide any solutions for your problem (I think AtomBomb's idea will work quite well though). But hey, at least now you know you're not the only one to have done it.

mellestad

Yep, a little solder will fix it.

Barring that, just swap circuit boards with the same model.

But, you know...next time fix it before it gets that bad...maybe?

RNEMESiS42

But, you know...next time fix it before it gets that bad...maybe?

Well, duh! :P It worked fine for a couple years because it was always stationary, but I've been upgrading some things on my computer recently that meant taking everything out of the case.

I'm going to try some soldering tonight, and hope for the best. I'm reading that article Cycophant posted, too. Thanks for the help so far, all!

RNEMESiS42

So...my soldering attempts failed, because it was too delicate a procedure for my soldering iron and seven very thin wires and contacts. Before I fork this drive over to a data recovery place, I thought about taking the route of replacing the circuit board. One of the only places I found carrying a circuit board with the same firmware as my drive is this place:

http://www.ultratecdirect.com/stocklists/FirmwareSearch.jsp?fw=HSBANTJAH

It's meant for a different WD drive than mine, but the firmware is the same...will this work?

Here are the stats of my drive if it helps:

MDL: WD1600JS-00MHB0
DATE: 27 APR 2005
DCM: HSBANTJAH

Spam

I really don't think that PCB would work - they need to be identical, and for one that PCB is for a 120GB drive instead of 160GB, and secondly, it doesn't actually look like its a sata PCB - it only mentions UDMA100, which usually implies IDE connection (as far as I know anyhow).

Soldering a cable to it would have been my solution as well, but you really need to use a low power iron and be really careful, and I see you've already tried that and not had any luck .

Spam

Hmm, have you tried ghetto fixing a cable to the board with tape or something similar instead of soldering?

As long as the wires are making proper contacts, it shouldn't matter how they're held on as long as its secure for long enough to get your data copied off, so even taping them on with sellotape or something similar might work.