Repair broken pins on the HD

[Ov3rk10k3D]

A pin on my hard drive is broken http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif It was pushed-in by accident, and even though I pulled it out with a pair of tweezers, it is loose and hard drive is freaking out. Computer boots-up, recognizes the HD, then gives errors, and at the end "Failure of Drive C:" "A,R,F?"

Can I do something about this situation from home? I'm a repair-kinda-guy, and have pretty good soldering skillz, lotsa tools, and accessories.

[Bovon]

If you can get to where the pins solder to the drive motherboard, you may get lucky and touch the soldering iron to the solder joints where they solder to the board. I 'think' the pins simply go thru the socket where the ribbon cable is plugged into, and then to the board. Chances are, the stress on the pin as it was pushed in broke the soldered joint where it is attached to the board. Some hard drives, you can see this, if the drive is open, and the board is exposed. If the drive is one of the sealed types, then the cover will have to be removed. If the warrantee is history, give it a shot. If the warrantee is stll in force, your best bet is to RMA the drive.

This wouldn't recover your data, I know...so, the choice is yours...open it up and attempt a repair and void any warrantee..or, loose the data and RMA it.

[1000hours]

Well, if it doesn't work right now anyway than I would open it up and try to soder that connection back up. Don't let anything touch that drive surface though (beware of dust)! Or you can send it to some repair service and pay big $$ to have it done. If its still under warranty you might try to RMA it like Bovon said. But they might charge you for the repair since the pin was broken. I'm not sure how companies handle something like that.

[Ov3rk10k3D]

It's a 2.5GB Quantum Fireball...lol....i'll just throw it away.....after of course attempting micro soldering

[vintron]

dont open the disc chamber though.... it will be of no use then

[Banti]

If you can remove the pin, you might want to try to make a special ide cable that has a pin sticking out in the connector to compensate for the broken pin... I mean if it is already ruined, you are not running a big risk. I did this with a video cable once.
Worked okay, but it was designed to be a temp fix from the begining.

Banti

[codybear]

it can be soldered with a very fine point..had it done for me on a 30 gig when RMA would not touch it