Is my damaged SSD really trash now?

[wpcoe]

I bought shorter SATA cables -- 30cm, vs the 50cm ones supplied with my mobo -- in an effort to reduce clutter inside the case. Great. What could go wrong? Well...

I attached one end of the cable to my Kingston SSD and it slid firmly on. While attaching the other end of the cable to the mobo, the first end slipped off the SSD. Hmmm. Then I couldn't get it to reattach to the SSD. Turns out the connector on the cable stripped off the plastic tab off the SSD connector, leaving bare metal connector pins. There is no way I can see to remove the SSD plastic tab from the cable connector. In the process of trying to straighten out the copper connectors (they had gotten mangled when I tried to reattach the cable), one of the copper pins snapped off. AAARRRGGGH!

(1) Can this be repaired?
(2) Should I consider this a defect of the Kingston SSD itself, or do you think somehow the cable connector was the culprit? I live in Thailand, and the shops here run on razor thin margins, and I predict they will accuse me of causing the damage. I'm wondering (if that indeed happens) if I should appeal directly to Kingston.

Or, should I just write this up as "another one of those things," and forget it.

(Although unrelated to my current drama, this is actually my second Kingston SSD -- the first one got zapped - along with two HDDs - when the power supply went on the fritz. Is the Universe trying to tell me not to have an SSD?)

 

[Blain]

(1) Can this be repaired?
(2) Should I consider this a defect of the Kingston SSD itself, or do you think somehow the cable connector was the culprit?

* I'm sure it's possible to repair this SSD one way or another.
At what cost, who knows.
* Looking at your picture and reading how the drive was damaged, I would assume that you damaged the connector by pulling on it, breaking the plastic tab under the pins, causing the plastic tab to get stuck in the cable connector.

My 2 cents

 

[FishAk]

If you still have the first SSD, you might be able to remove the power rail, and put it on the new one. Take the old one apart first to see how it goes.

 

[Old Hippie]

I bought shorter SATA cables -- 30cm, vs the 50cm ones supplied with my mobo

(1) Can this be repaired?
(2) Should I consider this a defect of the Kingston SSD itself
(3) Is the Universe trying to tell me not to have an SSD?

(1) Just about anything man-made can be repaired but unless you do it yourself, I doubt it would make economic sense.
(2) Sure sounds like your actions caused the problem and I doubt Kingston will cooperate with an RMA.
(3) I dunno about the Universe but it sounds like the Computer Gods have you on their "hit list".

I'd be trying to remove that piece from the SATA cable by any means possible (cut it apart) and replacing it because I noticed on the SATA data cable pinouts that pins 1 & 7 are grounds and you may not need both.

Go for it and good luck!

 

[wpcoe]

Hmmm, so it's worth trying to McGuyver this? I might try destroying the cable connector to see if I can salvage that tab. I no longer have the first (fried) SSD -- this was the replacement one.

I have no idea how it broke so easily. I did not push unduly hard to put it in ... it was the normal snug feeling going on. After that all I did was grab the other end of the cable to plug it in to the mobo, and I noticed the first end slid off the SSD. Go figure.

My only hope was that by some odd alignment of the stars, Kingston had a batch of bad connectors. Slim hope, I realize...

 

[FishAk]

It's cast aluminum, isn't it? It probably got hit and fractured along the way someplace, and it only took a small tug to get it to break the rest of the way off. They'll still blame you. Call Kingston and see what they can do, but if all else fails, or you don't want to wait for however long an RMA will take, you could still get it running.

 

[Blain]

It's cast aluminum, isn't it?

No, it's plastic.

 

[=Wendy=]

Get hold of a "Serial Combo Data & Power Cable" like this one.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/1-5GB-Serial.../dp/B000M1EB70

The power part of the connector will keep the data part in place, and should provide good contact.

 

[Blain]

The problem is that he has no contact point backing at all.
There's nothing left but thin metal contacts (like strips of tin foil).

 

[*kjm]

If you know any electrical technicians they could fix it for you. You could also see if anyone at your local technical college could fix it for you. All I would do if you brought it to me is solder a jumper from the broken pin to the wire in the SATA cable. You would not be able to remove the cable from the drive end ever again but it would fix it for you.

Edit: That is if they will not RMA it for you.

 

[csc]

Western digital rmaed a raptor of mine with the exact same problem. This was 4 years ago, no questions asked. I agree with kjm open it up and solder a sata cable directly to it.

 

[Binky]

Try to RMA it directly to Kingston before you break it any more. If you do any more damage to it trying to fix it, your chances of them helping you out may go down.

 

[adamantinepiggy]

You can buy a new SATA connector from an electronics parts company and solder it on, if you're good with a soldering iron. I fix them all the time at work.

 

[wpcoe]

I was able to extract the broken plastic tab from the SATA cable connector last night, and I'm letting the super glue dry for 24 hours to make sure it's got the greatest chance of staying re-attached to the SSD. I'm considering supergluing a SATA cable connector to the SSD as well, to make sure that tab never breaks off again.

I do have concerns about the (remaining) pins though, assuming I can skate by with only one ground pin: If the pins are not alligned *exactly* properly, do I risk frying the NAND chips is one pin makes contact with the wrong connector in the cable?

Get hold of a "Serial Combo Data & Power Cable" like this one.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/1-5GB-Serial.../dp/B000M1EB70

The power part of the connector will keep the data part in place, and should provide good contact.

Ironically, I saw one of those when I was shopping in Akihabara (Tokyo) where I bought the 30cm SATA cable and thought: "What value would such a connector ever have?" I now see your point and agree.

Try to RMA it directly to Kingston before you break it any more. If you do any more damage to it trying to fix it, your chances of them helping you out may go down.

I'm trying to track down some Kingston office in Thailand to try to get it replaced. Not sure if RMA is a western concept that extends to this culture. <g> I just found a toll-free (from Thailand to the USA) number for technical support (open M-F 8a-6p), and a local "General Contact" number in Thailand. Since it's Saturday afternoon, I need to wait a few more days. Patience is *NOT* on of my strong points, however...

I may go the solder route if I can find some tech shop to do it. But, I'm going to see first if (a) my super glue holds and it works with only one ground pin and if not, then (b) see if I can get some sympathy from Kingston on Monday. Probably should reverse the order of those two plans, but as I said, "patience" is not my forte.

And, last but not least: Thanks to all for the great feedback and ideas! :thumbsup:

 

[Emulex]

yah should be easy to solder back on. tv repair shop. its just a standard sata connector. even the 1.8" drives use a standard sata connector (just a slightly different power cable 3.3v to prevent dumb things).

easy peasy

 

[wpcoe]

The super glue did the trick for holding the plastic tab back on.

Carefully I plugged on SATA & power cables, opened up the computer case and attached it to mobo and power supply, and was sorely disappointed. No consistency in BIOS recognizing the drive. The very first boot, it said something about S.M.A.R.T. not working. AHCI would pause for about 30 seconds at the drive before deciding to recognize it or not. One time when it was recognized simply as "Disk Drive," I set it as the boot drive and rebooted and nothing.

So, disheartened, I unplugged the drive (carefully!) and had an impulse to put it in a $10 2.5" USB drive enclosure just for kicks. IT WORKED!!! Windows detected it, loaded the proper drivers, and identified it as "Kingston SNV425....". I could access the directory and file structure and open files. Wonderful!

Then I decided to put the drive in my trusty, but elderly (5-year old), Acer Travelmate 3004 notebook. I was nervous about bending the pins, but slowly slid it into the notebook, unable to see the actual docking of the drive connectors. Crossing my fingers, I powered on the notebook, and voila! it was recognized!

Since it had been my Win7 (64-bit) boot drive from my desktop computer, I had hoped Win7 would be able to handle the hardware differences enough to at least boot to a usable desktop. That was not to be: the Pentium M 760 (2Ghz) processor is not 64-bit compatible. So, for the sake of verifying short-term stability, I used a 32-Bit Win7 DVD and got it up and running. I figured that'd be faster than cloning the Vista 32-bit partition from my old HDD.

Today, I spent several hours cloning the Vista C: drive from the old HDD and imaging it on to the SSD with the free version of Macrium Reflect. Voila! My notebook now has a new SSD. Too bad the hardware -- especially the processor -- is so dog slow, but it's a nice boost to my notebook.

The notebook is probably a safer physical environment because there will be nothing pulling at the connector. It's firmly locked into place with no way for anything to give the fragile connector even a stray nudge.

I'm puzzled (and curious) why the drive was not even recognizable in BIOS of my desktop computer, but worked as if nothing was wrong in both a USB drive enclosure and in my notebook.

 

[wpcoe]

In my notebook the SSD didn't seem to be nearly as sprite as it was in my desktop computer, even from the initial Windows install. Once I got the Vista image onto the SSD, I ran CrystalDiskMark to compare it to when the same drive was new in my desktop computer:

The sequential reads are way down, which is probably why the drives seems more sluggish. The sequential writes are waaaay down. But, oddly the 4K reads are up. Go figure.

Why the negative difference in performance? I realize Vista doesn't support TRIM, but would that rein in the speed of the drive so quickly ... after only a couple hours light use?

Or, is it some bottleneck in the old hardware in the 5-year old notebook?

I can't find any garbage collection utility on the Kingston site. What is recommended to keep this drive spruced up on Vista?

FYI, the notebook has 2GB DDR2 RAM, of which 128MB is shared for the onboard graphics. The processor is a Pentium M760 with 2MB L2 cache, 533Mhz FSB.

I'm not sure, but think it has only Revision 1 (1.5Gb/s) SATA.

 

[Old Hippie]

Cool!

I'm glad you got it working although it's puzzling about your desktop.

If it works in a 2.5" enclosure and your laptop, you may get lucky with a 2.5" to 3.5" internal adaptor for your desktop.

 

[wpcoe]

Hey, don't tempt me! :hmm:

If I can somehow get the speeds up for my notebook, I'll be happy. For now....

 

[VeryCharBroiled]

Or, is it some bottleneck in the old hardware in the 5-year old notebook?

notebook might be SATA I (150 MB/s on paper, or 130ish MB/s real world). or, if supposedly SATA II it may be artificially limited to SATA I speeds. Ive heard of some notebooks that do that to save power.

either way nice you salvaged it

 

[Emulex]

alot of laptops have pata to sata converters which kills. no ncq wipes random iops out.

 

[wpcoe]

I almost forgot: Reading Emulax's comment about ncq -- this computer doesn't support AHCI. How much would that affect the speeds?

 

[Old Hippie]

this computer doesn't support AHCI. How much would that affect the speeds?

Not as much as SATA1 does.

IMHO your drive is doing all it can do with your laptop's configuration/restraints.

I'm pretty sure that your desktop's problem with the drive was a poor cable connection.

I have 2 of those adaptors that I linked and after the drive is inserted the closing of the top causes the drive to move forward and "lock" onto the internal connectors.

That stable connection is probably why the external case and laptop work well.

I'm not sure about other brands but that would probably fix the desktop's flakey connection problem.

 

[wpcoe]

Thanks, Old Hippie. I just printed out the NewEgg page and will scout around town to see if anybody here sells one. I tend to agree with your thinking. My damaged connector probably needs to maintain a firm connection.

 

[Old Hippie]

No problem.

If you do get one, before you close the top, make sure that the connectors are aligned by pushing the drive into the locked position with your finger.

I found my Intel units needed to be guided into position the first time.

It didn't happen with my new OCZ drives but it's just a word to the wise.