A Pin broke off on my HDD

[fustercluck]

Top left pin broke off out of my HDD, should I try and boot up with it (assuming it even connects)?

 

[honkydory]

Which pin was it?

 

[RebateMonger]

Top left pin of an IDE hard drive is Pin 39 - "Activity". I doubt the drive will work without it.

Edit:
I didn't bother thinking about what "Activity" really meant. It's the "busy" LED connection, and wouldn't be required for operation of the drive.

 

[fustercluck]

Originally posted by: honkydory
Which pin was it?

Do they all have names? - Just the top left one...that's all I can think of calling it.

 

[Locut0s]

If the warranty has expired and you don't mind possibly further damaging the drive you could try getting out the soldering gun and solder on a new pin.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: Locut0s
If the warranty has expired and you don't mind possibly further damaging the drive you could try getting out the soldering gun and solder on a new pin.

Good luck with that

 

[Googer]

Find an identical drive on ebay, the swap the electronics. That's how a data recovery center would do it.

 

[fustercluck]

Thanks for the info. Warranty expired 4 years ago. What are my options to get it repaired? I probably have files I need on there...Probably, I'm not exactly sure which one it is - Can I get it repaired locally? It's just a broken pin, it seems like someone would be able to fix it without too much hassle. I sure as hell ain't going to try and fix it. Me soldering a pin back on? That would be a horrible disaster.

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: ropeadope
Thanks for the info. Warranty expired 4 years ago. What are my options to get it repaired? I probably have files I need on there...Probably, I'm not exactly sure which one it is - Can I get it repaired locally? It's just a broken pin, it seems like someone would be able to fix it without too much hassle. I sure as hell ain't going to try and fix it. Me soldering a pin back on? That would be a horrible disaster.

I wouldn't try to solder the pin on. I would look to see if I could desolder the IDE connector as a whole first then solder a new connector on.

That's about your only cheap option. Try to find a friend or someone that will do it for cheap for you.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: ropeadope
Thanks for the info. Warranty expired 4 years ago. What are my options to get it repaired? I probably have files I need on there...Probably, I'm not exactly sure which one it is - Can I get it repaired locally? It's just a broken pin, it seems like someone would be able to fix it without too much hassle. I sure as hell ain't going to try and fix it. Me soldering a pin back on? That would be a horrible disaster.

It hundreds to thousands of dollars to pay a professional data recovery center fix it (i.e. Ontrack). Or you can do it your self for cheap by swapping the electronics from another drive of the same model and capacity. Take ESD precautions and it should take you less than an hour to perform the operation.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: ropeadope
Thanks for the info. Warranty expired 4 years ago. What are my options to get it repaired? I probably have files I need on there...Probably, I'm not exactly sure which one it is - Can I get it repaired locally? It's just a broken pin, it seems like someone would be able to fix it without too much hassle. I sure as hell ain't going to try and fix it. Me soldering a pin back on? That would be a horrible disaster.

I wouldn't try to solder the pin on. I would look to see if I could desolder the IDE connector as a whole first then solder a new connector on.

That's about your only cheap option. Try to find a friend or someone that will do it for cheap for you.

I have seen just the IDE connector PINs for sale at various electronics shops. But desoldering and resoldering 40 pins would be time consuming and if he's inexperienced at it, then such an idea would not be recomended for a first time learning experience; too much can go wrong leaving him with a short circuited PCB.

 

[fustercluck]

damned sensitive computer parts. One crappy pin breaks off and everything goes to hell. Assuming I could find a similar (how similar does it have to be, btw?) drive, how exactly would I use it to fix my current broken one? Can I just replace the whole back panel of the drive?

 

[PurdueRy]

Originally posted by: Googer

Originally posted by: PurdueRy

Originally posted by: ropeadope
Thanks for the info. Warranty expired 4 years ago. What are my options to get it repaired? I probably have files I need on there...Probably, I'm not exactly sure which one it is - Can I get it repaired locally? It's just a broken pin, it seems like someone would be able to fix it without too much hassle. I sure as hell ain't going to try and fix it. Me soldering a pin back on? That would be a horrible disaster.

I wouldn't try to solder the pin on. I would look to see if I could desolder the IDE connector as a whole first then solder a new connector on.

That's about your only cheap option. Try to find a friend or someone that will do it for cheap for you.

I have seen just the IDE connector PINs for sale at various electronics shops. But desoldering and resoldering 40 pins would be time consuming and if he's inexperienced at it, then such an idea would not be recomended for a first time learning experience; too much can go wrong leaving him with a short circuited PCB.

Yes it's not easy without the right equipment, that's why I suggested finding a friend who knows what they are doing or finding a shop that doesn't mind doing it for some cost. However, I doubt he will find someone who will do it for a cheap price unless they are a friend.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: ropeadope
damned sensitive computer parts. One crappy pin breaks off and everything goes to hell. Assuming I could find a similar (how similar does it have to be, btw?) drive, how exactly would I use it to fix my current broken one? Can I just replace the whole back panel of the drive?

Just remove the whole circuit board and swap them out, chips and all.

 

[Googer]

Private Message me if you have any problems with it.

 

[fustercluck]

Thanks.

I can't just use any other HDD's circuit board though...does it have to be the *exact* same as my HDD? Won't that erase all the data on there? If that's the case I might as well just buy a new HDD. I'd really like to save the data on there though.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: ropeadope
Thanks.

I can't just use any other HDD's circuit board though...does it have to be the *exact* same as my HDD? Won't that erase all the data on there? If that's the case I might as well just buy a new HDD. I'd really like to save the data on there though.

Yes it must be exact, including capacity. The the firmware won't recognize the CHS, size, the magnetic heads are different and will not control the actuator arm properly. It's likely the data on the disc will be ruined. Also the electrical connectors and PCB size/shape are not the same.

An example: You have a Seagate 7200.7 100GB, a Circuit Board from a 80GB will not work or see all the data on your Drive. You must buy a 100GB 7200.7 and swap them.

Also it would help me to know what brand and model you have. Some drives like Hitachi 7k250 allow you to manually modify the firmware CHS limitation to something smaller than the drives capacity. In theory this would allow you to use a 250GB Control board on a broken 200GB drive but it would not work the other way around. Also bear in mind that changing CHS is an expert setting and can destroy data, this method is not recommended.

 

[fustercluck]

Is there no way it will boot up without the top left pin in there?

Soldering would be my very last resort and my attempt to do so will be laughable. Can I use rosin core to re-create the pin or does it have to be something specific?

 

[Googer]

Try it with out the pin.

 

[jtvang125]

I once had a HDD that had one of pins pushed back into the plug probably from constant unplugging and plugging the ide cable. The drive will still read and write fine but did it extremely slow. This missing pin was causing windows to change the DMA mode 5 setting to PIO mode so it was taking up huge amounts of cpu resources whenever the drive was accessed. Even though I did plenty of read and writes to this drive during that problem the integrity of the data was not affected. I'm still using the same drive with no corrupt files so far after pulling the pin back out.

You can probably connect the drive and see if windows recognizes it. If it does you can probably transfer the data you need safely to another.

 

[PottedMeat]

Did you try running it in the first place?

If it needs the pin, just take an old IDE cable, trace wire 39 and separate it a few cms from the other wires. Strip off a few mms of insulation then solder it to the hard drive controller where pin 39 connects to.

EDIT:

This page says pin 39 is for the LED activity light - so it will probably work without the pin.

http://www.technick.net/public...p_dp=pinconhdd_ide_int

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: PottedMeat
EDIT:

This page says pin 39 is for the LED activity light - so it will probably work without the pin.

http://www.technick.net/public...p_dp=pinconhdd_ide_int

I'd posted much earlier that Pin 39 was the "Activity" line. But it didn't occur to me what that meant. I was thinking it was a response line telling the controller that there was head activity.

You are right. The "Activity" pin is one that isn't required for the drive to work.

 

[fustercluck]

Well good news (I think) my computer detects it correctly. It says NTDLR is missing though, that means windows was on that drive right?

Ah well, hopefully my data is still there, reinstalling windows would be a pain, but if my data is there I'll be happy.

 

[JackMDS]

Originally posted by: ropeadope
Well good news (I think) my computer detects it correctly. It says NTDLR is missing though, that means windows was on that drive right?

Ah well, hopefully my data is still there, reinstalling windows would be a pain, but if my data is there I'll be happy.

I think it is the wrong approach you can try to install Windows and in the process lose everything.

Get a new Drive, install Windows and connect the ?pin less? drive as a secondary drive, or make USB with enclosure.

Get your files off, and then decide if the drive is countable enough to be use as a storage drive.

 

[fustercluck]

I'm thinking about trying to repair XP (with the XP CD). You think I should install XP on a different drive though?

One weird thing that is happening is it's detecting the drive as a slave drive when it should be master, it's in the correct place. That leads me to believe it may not be very stable.

Anyhow, don't think I should try to do an xp repair thing? How could I lose everything in the process of attempting to repair or reinstall XP?

Thanks for the help guys.