Broken Hard Drive

[TheDaddie]

Hi all,

I was installing my new hard drive into my system earlier today, and as I inserted the SATA cable from the motherboard to the HDD, I pressed a bit too hard and a snapping sound came from the SATA connector. Is there any way to recover a hard drive from this? The SATA cable still connects however it is slightly wobbly and Windows doesn't detect it.

Cheers!

 

[JaredDM]

It's certainly possible. But, it'll require some soldering/hot air SMD rework skills. You'd need to match the PCB board number (E.G. 2060-771xxx-xxx REV X) with a same board number PCB. Then, you'd need to transfer the 8 pin ROM chip from the board you broke to the replacement board. This chip is typically labeled U12 next to it.

Just be careful not to ruin that chip or it's going to seriously complicate the data recovery case and cost a lot more to recover it later on.

If you're not comfortable doing it yourself, there are data recovery companies around who will do this for a few hundred $$$. We typically charge $450 flat rate for PCB replacement and transfer of all data to a new drive. Most reputable DR companies will have nearly all PCBs in stock and can get this done rather quickly.