Hello,
First time poster looking for a bit of advice.
My C: drive has died. The plastic housing has sheared off the serial data connnector. For a time all I needed to do was 'jiggle' it and it would show up in BIOS and then boot normally. Increasingly jiggling was quite unreliable until about two months ago no amount of jiggling would work.
You guessed it...ALL my important docs are on there and they aren't backed up! I'm in so much trouble as my partner has suggested I clone the C: to one of the old drives I've got knocking around (I used to do this but have gotten really, really lazy) but I never did it.
I managed to find a near identical drive (same s/n, model etc) to try and swop the controller board over. The donor drive was about 2 weeks apart from the C: but no joy. I was quite surprised I managed to get such a fit in drives and was sure it would work.
Turns out that someone I had look at the C: reckons one of the 7 pins is loose; in fact it's about to fall out.
SO: does anyone think I should see about soldering the pin back? Maybe even buy a replacement serial data connnector? Has anyone here done this before? Would someone be able to do it for me for a small price?
I think the controller board swop didn't work as the board is unique to this drive.
I'd rather not shell out the £600 quid these recovery firms are asking if it's such a simple fix.
Oh, and the drive whirrs fine and has never been dropped. I don't think it's anything major.
I just want BIOS to pick the drive up so I can clone the whole OS etc to the new donor drive. I've even contacted WD and they will do an RMA on the C: but I don't want to do that until I get the data off.
Sorry for the length of post but I hoped giving you all the details would help. I posted a similar cry for help on another forum but didn't get too much help (apart from one guy who was amazing but couldn't quite get it working)...
Looking forward to your thoughts.
First time poster looking for a bit of advice.
My C: drive has died. The plastic housing has sheared off the serial data connnector. For a time all I needed to do was 'jiggle' it and it would show up in BIOS and then boot normally. Increasingly jiggling was quite unreliable until about two months ago no amount of jiggling would work.
You guessed it...ALL my important docs are on there and they aren't backed up! I'm in so much trouble as my partner has suggested I clone the C: to one of the old drives I've got knocking around (I used to do this but have gotten really, really lazy) but I never did it.
I managed to find a near identical drive (same s/n, model etc) to try and swop the controller board over. The donor drive was about 2 weeks apart from the C: but no joy. I was quite surprised I managed to get such a fit in drives and was sure it would work.
Turns out that someone I had look at the C: reckons one of the 7 pins is loose; in fact it's about to fall out.
SO: does anyone think I should see about soldering the pin back? Maybe even buy a replacement serial data connnector? Has anyone here done this before? Would someone be able to do it for me for a small price?
I think the controller board swop didn't work as the board is unique to this drive.
I'd rather not shell out the £600 quid these recovery firms are asking if it's such a simple fix.
Oh, and the drive whirrs fine and has never been dropped. I don't think it's anything major.
I just want BIOS to pick the drive up so I can clone the whole OS etc to the new donor drive. I've even contacted WD and they will do an RMA on the C: but I don't want to do that until I get the data off.
Sorry for the length of post but I hoped giving you all the details would help. I posted a similar cry for help on another forum but didn't get too much help (apart from one guy who was amazing but couldn't quite get it working)...
Looking forward to your thoughts.