Is there a way to save my data from a broken hard drive

[Jonathan Heredia]

OK so I was taking my hard drive out of my tower and I pulled to hard i guess at an angle and broke the SATA connector plastic L shape from my hard drive, the data side not the power side, I was wondering if there was anyway I would be able to transfer my data somehow with that broke? If possible without taking it to anyone.

 

[Hjgrove]

Depending on your country they have a "Data recovery" centre, that take the disk out of the hard drive and then place it onto a machine that reads that data and transfers it to another drive.
But this can be expensive so its your choice really.

 

[thently]

From what I researched the best way is to glue the peice back in and get the data off then toss it.

Thent

 

[Hjgrove]

Depends on the issue but if you intend on opening it up you will need a anti-static kit and a dust free room (a normal room will have dust land on the sectors resulting in you losing even more data)
if the disk isn't spinning up when power is connected then you may want to go to a data recovery centre.

 

[TyrOd]

Depending on your country they have a "Data recovery" centre, that take the disk out of the hard drive and then place it onto a machine that reads that data and transfers it to another drive.
But this can be expensive so its your choice really.

Lol. No there is no such thing as a platter(disk) reading machine. That's not how data recovery labs recover data.
Even swapping the platters to another drive is extremely complicated and %99 of data recovery labs don't even attempt it.

What they would do is repair the connector and if it can't be repaired, they would replace the circuit board after re-soldering the EEPROM/NVRAM with the adaptives to the new board.

You can find companies that source these parts that will do this as well for you and it's typically cheaper than a data recovery lab will do it. Of course, there's no guarantee, but you can easily get a replacement board.

 

[thently]

What he said but first see it you can't glue the piece back in there..

 

[TyrOd]

What he said but first see it you can't glue the piece back in there..

Glue would be okay, but don't try to resolder it yourself if you don't have experience.

Then again, if you do know someone with a lot of experience with electronics soldering work, that may be a decent inexpensive option.

 

[thently]

I agree no solder but if you can get the little guy to stay in there you might get you data off.