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  1. #1
    Burninate all the things.
    Join Date
    Apr 2008
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    Salvaging a damaged hard drive

    Just finished a move and found one of my desktop hard drives got its SATA connection smashed against the edge of the case. The result was the plastic L-shaped connector was snapped off from the drive.

    In an effort to make the drive usable again, I was able to fit one of these (SATA 22 Pin Male to 22 Pin Female Left Angle Adapter https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CJDTRL4..._xSRbDbHWYTS9E) using the power connection to hold it in place. The only trouble is I wasn't able to save one of the pins in the SATA connection on the hard drive's side. It looks like it got pushed into the drive itself and my tweezers can't get a good enough grip to pull it back out.

    Am I totally screwed even if the other pins manage to line up? If so, any tips for trying to get it back out? Hell, what are the odds I'm screwed even if I get the pins lined up?

    The drive doesn't have anything particularly valuable on it but it's a 6TB 7200RPM game drive and I don't want to pay out to replace it if I can avoid it.

  2. #2
    Sandworm Swallows
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    Sylph

    You could take the cover off that protects the metal disks and try to push it out from the inside.

    That's....difficult but not entirely impossible.

    In reality the drive could fail any moment and you should probably bit the bullet on a new one.

  3. #3
    Ridill
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    If there's nothing valuable on it I'd just consider it dust. Either you'd end seeing if you can resolder on a new connector for it or ship it out to someone who can do that.

    Reading this I was thinking something internally had gone bad that might've required someone to pop open the HDD.

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