Fix hard drive pins

[zyberwoof]

I have a hard drive and it appears my IDE cable has pulled two of the pins out of my hard drive. I no longer have the pins either. Is there any way I can get the data off of the hard drive without using an expensive data recovery vendor?

The pins that pulled off are the two on the very right side. Also, the one one the upper left seems very weak and may break soon also.

 

[weilin]

pins can be "fixable" but you better have a very steady hand.. and a soldering iron. If you look on teh green part of every hardrive (the underbelly), you will see the "pins" soldered to the green board to correspond to each of hte pins in the IDE cable. If you take a old Cable and cut the connector off. you can solder the wires directly to the bottom of hte hard drive. (you may need to get a continuity tester to find out where each pin goes). good Luck.

 

[zyberwoof]

Wow, thanks. I can see exactly what you mean. Now I have a second question...

What kind of person should I call to possibly soldier something like this? Do I just look for an electrician or what would the person's job title be? I am assuming that there are electrician people in the phone book that could do this job. (I would prefer that someone else does the soldiering, not me.)

 

[ZOldDude]

Wow, thanks. I can see exactly what you mean. Now I have a second question...

What kind of person should I call to possibly soldier something like this? Do I just look for an electrician or what would the person's job title be? I am assuming that there are electrician people in the phone book that could do this job. (I would prefer that someone else does the soldiering, not me.)

Drop this guy a line and see what he says...he fixs broken CPU pins so it looks do able at a low cost.

http://www.motherboardrepair.com/

 

[zyberwoof]

Thanks ZOldDude, but I have already emailed him twice and have yet to receive a response.

 

[weilin]

this soldering is cake work really, its not as hard as people think it is. but if your not confident any repair technician can do it. (the ppl who fix VCR's, tvs etc) it would be a 2 second process for them, just look for audio/video tech in teh phone book i guess. They would have soldering irons, continuity testers and solder, u would probably have to provide hte wire though.

Edit: electricians can do it too, To any of these people, this is Electronics 101 in college.

Edit: Edit: once this soldering is done, the hd can probably be used like any other hd.. just not a removable.. the wire will be fixed to it "permimently". You might not want to throw the hd out anymore after this. Or if you have a really old hd, you can donate parts around and have the technician take the IDE thing from the really old hd and solder it to the new 1 u want to save, its hte same part.. technology has changed over hte years, but that little piece of plastic is the same since almost 15 years ago.