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- Mar 5, 2002
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I'm talking about the connection, primarily SATA hard drives. It's fragile.
I've broken two so far. The first was a 74Gb Raptor but I managed to save it by using a custom made SATA cable for Western Digital drives available from Overclockers.co.uk. This cable clicks shut over both the SATA Power cable and data connections, but only transfers data.
Fortunately, WD drives have a standard four pin molex power connector as well, so it worked. I had to wedge the small piece of plastic that broke off into the connector slot, but it worked ok.
The 2nd one I trashed was a 3 month old SATA 2 Samsung 320Gb drive.
I was swapping stuff about and I gently pulled an IDE cable out of the case. On it's way out it hit the SATA drive's connection and snapped it off. It didn't hit it that hard, it is a very fragile connection.
I had lots of data stored on that drive, lots of audio and DVD footage, to mention just a couple.
First I tried securing a SATA cable to the drive using araldite, but that didn't work. So I looked up the connections on the net , trimmed back a SATA cable and soldered the leads to the connectors.
It was an extremely fiddly job. The middle and two outer connections are all ground, the others are two for input and two for output. So I bent all the ground connections up, used a very fine tip bit for the soldering iron and some thin solder.
And it worked
I was able to retrieve all the data. I'm going to cover the soldered connection with silicon rubber which should give the connection some kind of security and rigidness.
I'm not sure whether to keep using the disk as it is or ditch it, I'm wondering about it's reliability. But I guess if it works and it's not subjected to harsh movement, it should be ok.
So, a word of warning, be careful when rummaging inside your PC - watch those SATA connections.
Here's pix:
I've broken two so far. The first was a 74Gb Raptor but I managed to save it by using a custom made SATA cable for Western Digital drives available from Overclockers.co.uk. This cable clicks shut over both the SATA Power cable and data connections, but only transfers data.
Fortunately, WD drives have a standard four pin molex power connector as well, so it worked. I had to wedge the small piece of plastic that broke off into the connector slot, but it worked ok.
The 2nd one I trashed was a 3 month old SATA 2 Samsung 320Gb drive.
I was swapping stuff about and I gently pulled an IDE cable out of the case. On it's way out it hit the SATA drive's connection and snapped it off. It didn't hit it that hard, it is a very fragile connection.
I had lots of data stored on that drive, lots of audio and DVD footage, to mention just a couple.
First I tried securing a SATA cable to the drive using araldite, but that didn't work. So I looked up the connections on the net , trimmed back a SATA cable and soldered the leads to the connectors.
It was an extremely fiddly job. The middle and two outer connections are all ground, the others are two for input and two for output. So I bent all the ground connections up, used a very fine tip bit for the soldering iron and some thin solder.
And it worked
I was able to retrieve all the data. I'm going to cover the soldered connection with silicon rubber which should give the connection some kind of security and rigidness.I'm not sure whether to keep using the disk as it is or ditch it, I'm wondering about it's reliability. But I guess if it works and it's not subjected to harsh movement, it should be ok.
So, a word of warning, be careful when rummaging inside your PC - watch those SATA connections.
Here's pix:
(* I'd make a backup anyway though 
)
