Broken IDE Pins. I'm screwed aren't I?

Lorian

Rev wrote:

Yeah, I'll have a call round today and see.

Let me know if they don't want to help you or just quote you for a new drive.

I'd have a go at providing a soldered wire-around. My eyesight is not so good nowadays but I'm pretty good with a soldering iron.

It'd cost you something for my time, and the cost of return postage. You'd need a hard disk mailing box (the pc store might give you one)

Of course I'd accept no liability for the drive or the inability to subsequently recover data!

raymond

Dont even think about "wedging" a bit of pin or anything else in the hole. Fidn a competant person, either a tv repair guy or similar ( NOT A COMPUTER REPAIRER as most of those guys dont know how to hold a soldering iron nnever mind use one)

Expect to pay someone willing to do this properle, and he will replace the entire connector or mount a "remote" connector so that you can use the drive as normal, assuming you have not shorted out any pins and damaged something.

I would charge around £50 for this.

PS ... you risk damaging not only the hard drive, but the motherboard as well if you mess it up.

jakemuk

we will recover for 200inc postage

Joe_Bloggs

@raymond
You are probably right in that many computer products are not worth repairing and the staff involved may not have aquired the expertise. There are overclocking mods available and motherboard defects that can be overcome by a competent computer technician handling the smallest surface mount technology.

My guess is that the reset pin only has to work for a few seconds anyway when the hard disk controller powers up. It probably has its own pullup resistor so it will be fine once disconnected.
If anyone knows different or has had similar experiences then now is your chance. If the information is on the disk is valuable then take it to the experts. Recordable CDs /DVDs were never cheaper.You only realise this when you are a victim of the circumstances in this situation.
J_B. (It helps to be able to see what you are looking at !)

Rev

Right, I had a word with a friend of mine today and he's going to make me a USB to IDE cable with the missing pins in hopes of completing the circuit and letting me use the drive long enough to get the info off.

Having phoned around and been quoted £90-£250 for data recovery its just not something I can't afford to do.

I'll just have to hope this works and if not I'm screwed.

Thankfully the new mobo I put in has SATA connectors so I can replace it with a SATA drive.

Thanks for taking the time to reply everyone, it's greatly appreciated.