Help with a broken drive.

spencesdm · 30 Jan 2021 at 16:14

I have no idea if I should post this in this section but here goes. I stupidly in haste of trying to fit a new drive quickly snapped the power connection on my 3tb mechanical drive. This drive have photography that I'd taken since 2008. I'd just organised it the day before because I was going to transfer everything from the mechanical drive to the 1tb ssd I've just bought. Does anyone have any experience with data recovery or repairing the drive. I've already been quoted by one form 700 -2500 dollers to attempt to recover the data. The next place I tried started from £400 plus vat. I really can't afford this. I looked at replacing the PCB but discovered that I need to change the bios chip. I have no experience with soldering so I'm reluctant to try this. Any advice would be great.

spencesdm · 30 Jan 2021 at 16:28

bremen1874 said:
What did the snapping involve? Pictures would be good (upload to Imgur and then link the from there).

On the face of it, it sounds like you just need to get the connector reattached.

Ita the piece that holds the cable to the drive. I've died seeing if I can re attach it but it's not doing anything.

spencesdm · 30 Jan 2021 at 19:18

Purgatory said:
Add a picture. Also dont panic it's actually easy to fix a broken sata power connector to make the drive work for now. But need pictures first.

The recovery place are being stupid with them prices, all they have to do is solder a cable to the pcb power and power the drive up and take all your data off it, takes no more than 15mins to do the solder job and wire a connector up to power it and then remove all data to a new drive.

I was quoted £95 from a second place if they could just transfer the files. But if it needed recovery £350.
Broken power sata https://imgur.com/gallery/BNKe9VZ

spencesdm · 30 Jan 2021 at 19:44

Yeah I'm not really keen to try soldering myself. I have zero experience in it. Especially being that their is so many connections. I found the piece of broken plastic and tried putting that in the cable and pushing the pins in but it got me nowhere. £95 I could live with if I really had to so it might be my only option

spencesdm · 30 Jan 2021 at 21:43

Purgatory said:
All the pins are still there if you can get the ssd power cable in gently and line it up the right way it should power the drive long enough to back it up, do it outside the case and have the drive on a table or sat on top of the case. Just make sure to line the power cable the right way round, remember its like a "L" shape so line it up as if the "L" is there.

Its actually not as bad as I thought no soldering even needed. I thought when it broke it took pins with it.

That's what I'd hoped would happen but I can't seem to get it to power up. I managed to the the piece of plastic to line up with the power cable and got it to go in and it seems to fit right but nothing seems to happen.

spencesdm · 30 Jan 2021 at 23:29

I've got the piece of plastic in the power lead now. It doesn't seem to make any difference the only thing I haven't done is glue it in place. I'm not sure if glueing it in place would make any difference. The connection seems solid but still does nothing.

spencesdm · 30 Jan 2021 at 23:48

Just tried again with a different sata power cable. I wasn't sure the one I was using was ok still nothing. I'm a bit worried about gluing anything to the drive itself. I think I'm just going to have to accept and pay the £95 and hope I haven't totally messed the drive up.