IDE hard drive with a broken pin

[sup2jzgte]

What will happen if you have 1 broken pin on your IDE hard Drive? The reason why I'm asking is because I found an old hard drive and the first pin on the bottom row closest to the power connector is gone. I hooked it and it seems to be working just fine, but I just wonder what that pin does and can I still use the drive?

 

[Cromewell]

It depends on what side the pin is on, I'm assuming it's on the left (never seen power on the other side yet but you never know), so pin 39 is the thing that tells the LED when to flash. http://www.technick.net/public/code/cp_dpage.php?aiocp_dp=pinconhdd_ata_int

 

[sup2jzgte]

Yeah it is Pin 39, so I should not be to worried then?

 

[The_Other_One]

Try it...worst case, you could probably just resolder a new pin on

 

[sup2jzgte]

Try it...worst case, you could probably just resolder a new pin on

Well it works pretty good so far, but do you think it will be stable?

 

[madtownidiot]

Don't even bother trying to solder a new pin, it's not worth the frustration, unless you absolutely need whatever's stored in the HDD

 

[Cromewell]

I'd just use it, the LED driver can't hurt anything if it's missing. There's no reason it shouldn't work fine. If you are worried about it, backup the data on it regularly or you can probably sell it on ebay. People buy stuff that outright doesn't work there and that hard drive should work fine.

 

[elitehacker]

Yeah just use it but don't put very valuable data on it.