SATA cable ripped port off HDD

[fightingpenguinz]

I was disconnecting my Seagate 500GB SATA HDD when I noticed something in the SATA cable...it looked like dust. Upon further investigation I realized it was the port you plug the cable into on the hard drive. The hard drive is now showing 6 or 7 gold "flat" pins where the port was located. I can slide the cable back on the drive onto the pins, but computer is currently down due to motherboard issues, so I can't real tell if its still functioning properly...

So, has this ever happened to anyone? And if it has, were you able to at least get the drive to work long enough to retrieve the data?

Thanks.

 

[sminlal]

This is what the SATA power and connectors look like. The plug on the end of standard SATA cables plugs directly into these. If you've got an adapter of some sort then your system isn't using a standard SATA cable. That's OK, as long as you haven't damaged the adapter everything should be fine:

 

[fightingpenguinz]

No adapter, but from what I can see it looks like the L-shaped plastic portion on the HDD SATA connector has broke off and is stuck in the SATA cable. Maybe I'll get lucky and I can try to save some data. Thanks for the reply!

 

[sminlal]

Ah, so you're saying the metal pins are still there but the plastic guide has broken off the drive? That's bad.

If you're careful and leave the broken-off piece of plastic in the cable connector, you may be able to push the cable back onto the pins so that they're squeezed against the pins in the cable (the way they would be if the plastic piece was still attached to the drive).

Alternatively, you may be able to use a little glue to attach the plastic piece to the bottom of the pins as a temporary fix. Don't use too much though - you don't want to get the glue onto the tops of the pins where it would interfere with the connection.