2.5 inch external drive on 3.5 inch bridge

[Anonyzero]

My 2.5" 1TB external drive's socket became detached from the bridge because of the pressure on the wire. Now before I'd make my attempt at soldering it back on the circuit board I'd like to make a backup of my data stored on the drive. The only 2.5" bridge I had (taken from a different brand external drive) didn't work - possibly because it's meant for 500gb drives, or there might be issues with encryption (but the drive would at least spin, but it didn't even do that).

I've read on other forums that connecting it directly to my pc through sata doesn't work, because the files are possibly encrypted or unaccessible.

So the question is, is it safe to try another 1TB bridge, but meant for 3.5" drives without frying the drive itself ? Because it requires an additional 12v connection in order to power a 3.5" drive.

Otherwise i'll just do my best at holding the drive still while it's connected with the loose port to make a backup, before I'd start soldering it back together.

 

[SkyNetRising]

What exactly are you calling "bridge"? Can you provide photos?

 

[CountMike]

If that's an ordinary SATA drive you can still connect it to adapter meant for 3.5" drives but will have to provide it with proper SATA power connector/cable which are same for all drives. they provide 12v (for 3.5") as well as 5v for 2.4" drives.
Drive itself may or may not be encrypted, that would depend on your original USB adapter and it's firmware, why don't you try connecting to SATA first and see, nothing bad could happen.

 

[Anonyzero]

What exactly are you calling "bridge"? Can you provide photos?

The external drive is an iomega lphd-up3 drive (usb3.0)

by bridge I mean the component with the sata connection to usb port (as seen on the image).

However this for a 3.5" drive with a USB-B port and 12V plug (similar to what I have on hand), instead of the 2.5" drive version which doesn't require an additional 12v to run.

 

[Anonyzero]

Drive itself may or may not be encrypted, that would depend on your original USB adapter and it's firmware, why don't you try connecting to SATA first and see, nothing bad could happen.

The problem with connecting it to sata means that I have to unplug one of my drives because I don't have any spare sata cables at hand, so I thought I'd ask about this option first before opening up my pc and figuring out which drive I can miss for the moment (which I'm planning to do)

 

[CountMike]

2.5" drives work of 5v, you need to provide that to the drive if you use adapter for 3.5" drives. To ensure you get proper voltage connect power from PC's PSU but without adapter from Molex to SATA or make sure it has all 4 wires connected. Molex gives 12v at Yellow wire and 5v from red wire.
If there is a power supply specially for that USB adapter for 3.5" drives it may not have 5v too.
P.S.
If you have an optical drive, you can connect HDD in it's place, same connectors.

 

[Anonyzero]

I've plugged it into my PC, but it was formatted on a mac, so it had a macOs journaled structure. I didn't even get to the point where I would see encrypted files of any kind. I've come up with a weird Macgyver type solution for holding the port back in place with enough inward and downward pressure on the usb cable that was plugged in. So I could copy the files on a laptop to another drive that I had lying around. After all the data was safe I snapped off the port entirely and while it was impossible to fix it (I don't really have the skills, or surgeon's hands to fit 5 wires in a 3mm space), I took a usb 2.0 cable and soldered it to the board, which meant less wires and more space for soldering.

Might not be the most ideal long-term solution but it's functioning now at usb2.0 speeds until I feel the need for a new external drive.