Broke Pin on hard drive.

A

alexrjohnson

New Member
I was putting my hard drive back into my desktop in the dark, and broke one of the little connector pins where the IDE cable is supposed to go cuz I plugged the floppy cable instead. The drive wouldn't detect in my system. I fiddled around with the pin and stuff with a screwdriver, and it detected once but when I moved the computer I lost it forever :( . I have important data on this drive, and don't want to lose it. Should I just consider it garbage or is there a way I can actually get it to work again? It's just one pin.
 
How handy are you with a soldering iron?

You could try repairing or replacing the connector, though if you had the skills for that you would have tried already... If you could tack a wire to the Printed Circuit Board of the drive where the broken pin connects and then attach that wire to the appropriate socket on the ribbon cable, you might get a good enough connection to at least retrieve all the data form the drive before you dispose of it. This is a benchtop-type jury rig and I wouldn't recommend trying to use that workaround as a permanent fix.
 
if you're abslutely sure you can do it you could try getting hold of an old hard drive and unsoldering the IDE connector and try soldering that onto your damaged hard drive. i'm sure you could cobble a simplier temporary solution together but its unlikely to stay working for long.
 
try a thin papperclip, cut it to sixe, insert it into the hole in the IDE, and leave a little bit of it sticking out, and press the IDE to it carefully, it should work, thats what i used to do with my old monitor plug
 
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