Broken pin

6 Apr 2005 8:51 PM

John Doe

Hi all
My friend recently discovered that he had broken a pin on his harddrive.
You know the pins in the Pata connector. Just one of them. Is there a
way to repair it or does he have to just buy a new one? The warranty
became obsolete a long time ago. Maybe there is a easy way to take an
old connector and soldering it in place. Any pointers?

6 Apr 2005 9:30 PM

Grinder

John Doe wrote:

> Hi all
> My friend recently discovered that he had broken a pin on his harddrive.
> You know the pins in the Pata connector. Just one of them. Is there a
> way to repair it or does he have to just buy a new one? The warranty
> became obsolete a long time ago. Maybe there is a easy way to take an
> old connector and soldering it in place. Any pointers?

If you're comfortable using a soldering iron, you can extract a pin from
a defunct hard drive and use it to replace the broken one. Remove the
controller board from the hard drive you are going to cannibalize, and I
think you can see that the pin is mechanically quite simple -- a
soldering iron and hemostats/needle-nose pliers should be enough.

6 Apr 2005 9:53 PM

kony

On Wed, 06 Apr 2005 20:51:20 GMT, John Doe
<evildjNOSPAM@gmail.com> wrote:

>Hi all
>My friend recently discovered that he had broken a pin on his harddrive.
>You know the pins in the Pata connector. Just one of them. Is there a
>way to repair it or does he have to just buy a new one?

Has he tried the drive yet?
Might be a redundant pin (like a ground) which isn't
actually needed.

>The warranty
>became obsolete a long time ago. Maybe there is a easy way to take an
>old connector and soldering it in place. Any pointers?

Yes, a pin could be soldered into place, maybe even same pin
if it only came loose at the solder joint instead of
snapping in the middle. otherwise, some other pin of same
diameter bent or otherwise fixed into place plus a jumper
lead to the PCB pad for that pin... shouldn't be hard for
someone used to doing semi-fine electronics work to see
what's needed and make necessary repair, improvising if/as
needed.

If your friend lacks this experience then he should ask
someone else who can do it. It might be prudent to not play
with (plug/unplug) the repaired connector too much till the
drive is tried and data is copied off, just in case it would
come loose again or he decided it was time to upgrade his
drive and only needed the data after all, not a working
drive for longer-term use.