A Pin broke off on my HDD

[Googer]

Pin 39- DASP:

6.3.4 DASP- (Drive active/drive 1 present)
This is a time-multiplexed signal which indicates that a drive is active, or
that Drive 1 is present. This signal shall be an open collector output and
each drive shall have a 10K ohm pull-up resistor.
During power on initialization or after RESET- is negated, DASP- shall be
asserted by Drive 1 within 400 msec to indicate that Drive 1 is present.
Drive 0 shall allow up to 450 msec for Drive 1 to assert DASP-. If Drive 1
is not present, Drive 0 may assert DASP- to drive an activity LED.
DASP- shall be negated following acceptance of the first valid command by
Drive 1 or after 31 seconds, whichever comes first.
Any time after negation of DASP-, either drive may assert DASP- to indicate
that a drive is active.
NOTE 1 - Prior to the development of this standard, products were introduced
which did not time multiplex DASP-. Some used two jumpers to indicate to Drive
0 whether Drive 1 was present. If such a drive is jumpered to indicate Drive
1 is present it should work successfully with a Drive 1 which complies with this
standard. If installed as Drive 1, such a drive may not work successfully
because it may not assert DASP- for a long enough period to be recognized.
However, it would assert DASP-to indicate that the drive is active.

http://www.interfacebus.com/Design_Connector_IDE.html
http://www.ele.uri.edu/courses...ts/roland_ide/ide.html

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: 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.

That all depends on which pin was damaged.

 

[Googer]

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.

Yes do install windows on a different hard drive. Get the data from the old one and throw it out.


NTLDR does tell me that windows was installed on that drive. Fixing it may be as easy as getting a new copy of NTLDR (from me) and a boot disk. Using a command prompt copy NTLDR over to your windows/system and system32 directories. NTLDR error also suggests an problem with BOOT.ini, fixing that may be as simple as a boot disk and manually editing the file to tell it where the proper windows directory is located.


Also this should make for a good excuse to go out and buy an external hard drive. There is no reason why you should not have had a back up in the first place. Next time this happens it will be of little worry and a convenient trip to Super Wal-Mart to buy one of their over priced hard drives in the electronics department.

 

[fustercluck]

I got a couple giant backup files around from not too long ago. I'm looking for a good HDD deal right now, they're usually some good deals out there, with rebates and all. Thanks for the help.

 

[Googer]

Originally posted by: ropeadope
I got a couple giant backup files around from not too long ago. I'm looking for a good HDD deal right now, they're usually some good deals out there, with rebates and all. Thanks for the help.

Three words: Seagate FreeAgent Pro.

Why?

The FreeAgent Pro has USB, 1394/Firewire, and eSATA. It is also upgradeable when a new connection type comes out. The bottom part has the connections and Seagate plans on selling new base plates with what ever the latest connection at the time is.




Costco has the 750GB version for $225. The $500GB version is $189

 

[Googer]

Fry's has a 300GB SATA hard drive for $60. You can get a controller card on newegg.com for $10-25. I picked up an old 3 port Netcell "driverless" Hardware based SATA RAID card for $25.


http://www.outpost.com/product/4987891

 

[nerp]

500GB drives seem to be the sweet spot for price. That's probably what I'd pick up.

 

[Googer]

This article is of interest to this thread:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/33305/135/