Broken port on external hard drive.

[twigthewonderkid14]

Apologies for posting about a pretty frequently raised issue- but I've got the problem of the USB port of a verbatim 1TB external hard drive breaking off the main board. Right in the middle of setting up a new laptop so it's chock full of really important data.

I opened the case and managed to reposition the port long enough to get the light to come on, but that was about it. Since then nothing. I can get an exact replica of the drive, but it's not exactly cheap. So all I really want to know is, is it likely that I'll be able to get this to connect for any length of time to transfer files, is there any way of repairing this sort of damage, or getting the data off this drive? I don't exactly have much (any) hardware to hand but will give anything a shot!

 

[jsmithepa]

Unless you have one of those secure drives that does self-encryption, inside the box should be a standard SATA drive which you can remove and temporarily hook it up to a desktop as an internal drive long enough to copy the data out.

2nd option is, if there is a SATA drive inside, buy any generic replacement USB enclosure or dock will do the job, doesn't need to be the exact replica, UNLESS as said before this is an encryption variety.