Broke the !@#$ SATA connect off my hard drive.

[cheesehead]

To make a long and dull story short, my hard drive is now lacking a SATA connector. The little plastic bit had fallen off, and my attempts to fix it (which only worked if you held the connector on with a vice) have only ripped off one of the terminals.

Short of getting another terminal block from Western Digital, is there any way to fix this? I looked at soldering the leads from a SATA cable to the appropriate through-holes on the control board, but couldn't figure out what to solder to where - there appear to only be four leads!

 

[nyker96]

maybe if you have solder skills you can fit it back on. but that might void warranties.

 

[cheesehead]

Originally posted by: nyker96
maybe if you have solder skills you can fit it back on. but that might void warranties.

Too late for that. 🙂

The connector is gone, and I'd need another terminal block to replace the existing one.

 

[taltamir]

call customer support. My buddy broke his SATA plugs off of two western digital raptors and WD warranty replaced them for him.
Companies are AWARE of the fragileness of certain parts, they save money by not reinforcing them, and most are willing to replace parts that the user breaks himself even when he admits to having broken it in install... if enough cases of that happen they will start reinforcing them or denying warranty replacements on such cases.