Portable harddrive problem

Backbiter

A colleague has a big problem with her Verbatim hard drive (this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Verbatim-47564-320GB-2-5-Inch-Drive/dp/B0014BE2S0).
I suspect she has clumsily inserted the USB lead as there appears to be visible damage to the pins in the USB slot, so it can't connect to a PC and it's now useless.
I have in the past used a USB caddy to attach a hard drive from a laptop to retrieve files. Is there a way of doing something similar with a drive like this? There are no screws on the case to open it up, but even if I succeeded in getting the casing off, would it be possible to attach the contents to a caddy?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

victor2

Assuming you can get into the case, there's every chance you can take the actual drive out and put it in a caddy. If the USB socket is damaged beyond repair, you've got nothing to lose...

bluesnake

I had the older version and so did my friend. His had a usb to ide/sata? converter inside the case connected to the drive. Mine is straight usb, yes the usb socket is soldered to the motherboard of the drive, no sata connector.

Backbiter

bluesnake wrote: »

I had the older version and so did my friend. His had a usb to ide/sata? converter inside the case connected to the drive. Mine is straight usb, yes the usb socket is soldered to the motherboard of the drive, no sata connector.

Is there any way of repairing/ replacing a USB socket? The pins look pretty fragile so I wouldn't fancy fiddling with them.

bluesnake

Backbiter wrote: »

Is there any way of repairing/ replacing a USB socket? The pins look pretty fragile so I wouldn't fancy fiddling with them.

Mine had a sealed case, so I found the weakest join and pried that area apart with a wood chisel and continued until the case was open.

Getting a micro usb may be a bit expensive and possibly hard to find. Personally if yours is inherently usb, I would cheat by find out which pin on the fat end of the cable goes to which pin on the disk using an ohm meter. Then I would cut the small connector off the usb end and directly solder the 4 wires to the onboard usb pins, or straight to the board, depending which is easier. Not the prettiest way but it works.

if it is sata would mount it as a second drive in a desktop.

if it is 2.5" ide would mount it as a slave drive in a desktop using a conversion cable for 2.5" to 3.5" ide. Would be very surprised if it was an old disk like this though