Ideas on busted hard disk?

[Coolerthanyou]

A hard disk of mine just died. Not the typical way I dont think, unless that also happened, but I see one of the drive pins broke into the cable. It didn't break off completely, about 1/3 of it is left in a nub. I'm thinking I could get another drive cable and put a tiny cushioning then a piece of pin to touch the nub that's left. Would this make enough of a connection to work the disk? I need to recover the data into another disk. Or is there a better way to do this?

[Tashiro]

Moved to Hardware.

Tashiro

[Zigzagcom]

You would be risking an intermittant connection. Depending on what the pin does, you could end up with further data loss, but if you are good with soldering you might at least be able to recover data on the drive. The drive is subjected to vibrations from the spinning disc and moving head, mostly at startup.

If you end up shorting the pin/repair, you could fry your board as well.

[Coolerthanyou]

http://www.technick.net/public/code/cp_dpage.php?aiocp_dp=pinconhdd_ata_int

http://www.bbdsoft.com/ide.html

Which one of these is correct? Aren't these two supposed to be the same?

Anyways, the pin that broke is 32. Would there be any risk in trying it with it? And about soldering, is the solder material compatible with the conductivity of the device? And what kind of soldering are we talking about, the circuit board kind? Surely not the industrial type, whatever that's called? With the board soldering, I think there would be a lump and the pin wouldn't fit. Still I'm wondering what the risks are of just trying the first way with a pin piece being pin 32.

[Zigzagcom]

What I meant by soldering, is that you might have to cut away some of the plastic that surrounds the area of the broken pin on the harddrive, then get a longer piece of pin from another device that can be sacrificed.
You'd then solder the piece onto the stub of the broken pin. This is just good old soldering with an iron and a small tip. The solder should have flux in it as well. The soldering-iron should have sufficient wattage to heat the pin/pinstub quickly, but you need to take care of not overheating them and possibly damaging another component via excess heat-flow.


Once the pin is restored, you can then bend it to slide into the hole of the female plug on the IDE cable. Possibly pre-bending the piece to account for the offset would be much better, as you wouldn't stress the pin assembly any further.

There seems to be a conflict between the two pin-out diagrams on pin 32, so I couldn't tell you, but if the HD is dead because of the missing pin, what diff does it make. You know you need to repair it somehow.

[Coolerthanyou]

Yea you're right. It doesn't matter which pin. Especially now that I took a closer look after trying the easy way. The pin didn't just break, it's torn up from the inside and caved in with a stretching hole around the plastic. Stuffing a pin piece in the cable will never work. I looked around for directions and found more or less this same advice about soldering you gave me, either way thanks. The only problem is that it's easier said than done. In 'cutting away' at the plastic around it, I don't see how I could do that without ripping the disk apart. The pin is way in there, it's a really small space and right next to the plastic to be cut is circuit board. Maybe with a laser cutter... Or maybe the disk can be disassembled in an ordered way? I tried removing the whole plastic but that won't come off easily. And if I go poking around it trying to unscrew it loose, I'm sure to destroy it. I'm going to look for some info on if it's possible to take apart a hard drive and keep it functioning after putting it back, but if anyone wants to tell me about some especially enlightened guides to doing this, let me know. I've never had a hard disk die out, and this happens? Damn!

[Zigzagcom]

While you are busy taking the HD apart, you might want to clean it... :p :D


http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/cleandrive1.html

[Coolerthanyou]

heh... fortunately, I wont have to destroy it. it's been resolved, I hope. I'm currently writing this from the system in said hard disk. I was going to edit the post, but yea, it was that quick. It wasn't really broken, it was pushed in. Long story short, I googled, then pulled it out with tweezers and got lucky. I'm sure the drive will keep working for it's lifespan. not sure enough to not back up what I need though. but the cable is never coming off, it goes with it. I guess that's all folks.

I just have to add though that this happened as I was switching around from a windows drive, which I only logged into for like 5 minutes to do something. Must be the evil flaming eye on mount MS laying evil powers on me...

[Zigzagcom]

Glad you're up and running...