Broke my Sata connector

[Sokratz]

OK. Me being the idiot that I am have finally broken one of my SATA connectors off the HD. Just the plastic bit that holds the cable on. All of the pins are still there. What are my options? I'm thinking about soldering a sata cable directly on. Any other ideas?

 

[AWhackWhiteBoy]

this is a common problem, WD makes a bracket you can buy that clips onto the end of their drives and prevents this. even so,i'm not sure but you might be able to use this to clip in even though its broken now.

p.s. - wrong forum

 

[oldman420]

thats the one main reason i got rid of sata bad conectors if the end is still stuck in the sata cable you may be able to gently put it back thats what i did but it got buggier and buggier and finaly died i would try a reputable local computer/electronics shop the might be able to solder it for you.
i am so sorry this has happened to you man i hope you can get it going

 

[Sokratz]

I was able to stick the broken part back into the cable, bend some of the pins, re-attach, and hot glue it secure. Seems OK right now. I'm in a raid0 setup so I assume I'd notice fairly quickly if something bad was happening. I'll still call Hitachi and see if they'll RMA it or how much it'd be to fix. At least I can get my data off of it now. *whew*. My soldering skills are good enough for this but I don't know if leakage would occur or if extra solder/non-perfect gold connections would cause me problems.

I'll keep ya folks in the know.

 

[oldfart]

Whoever came up with that flimsy POS SATA connector should be shot. I cant believe that thing ever made it to production. I broke the connector on my brand new 74G Raptor. I called WD and they replaced the drive no questions asked. I also bought the SecureConnect cable to keep it from happening again.

 

[Sokratz]

Originally posted by: oldfart
Whoever came up with that flimsy POS SATA connector should be shot. I cant believe that thing ever made it to production. I broke the connector on my brand new 74G Raptor. I called WD and they replaced the drive no questions asked. I also bought the SecureConnect cable to keep it from happening again.

Amen brother. Lets see if NewEgg (extended warranty) or Hitachi is as cool as WD.

 

[Sokratz]

Good news. Hitachi will warranty it. Bad news, they don't have a warranty service that'll ship me a drive on credit and let me return my drive. The suck: Not having a drive on credit that I can duplicate so bye-bye Raid0. Tried NewEgg too. No love from them. I think I'm going to look for secure SATA adapters.

 

[Robor]

Originally posted by: oldfart
Whoever came up with that flimsy POS SATA connector should be shot. I cant believe that thing ever made it to production. I broke the connector on my brand new 74G Raptor. I called WD and they replaced the drive no questions asked. I also bought the SecureConnect cable to keep it from happening again.

Couldn't agree more with the first statement. I broke mine off my 37GB Raptor and it took nearly no stress on the cable to do it. Rather than try and warranty it I slid the cable back on without the lower support that broke off. I glued the cable back on and strapped a popsickle stick to the drive to support the cable. It isn't perfect but it's worked for about a year or so right now. I'll probably RMA it when I upgrade the drive and move it to another system.