sata port broken plastic

[DJRM Keyboardist]

Hi my DVD drive's sata port has broken. The L-shaped plastic has come off and stuck in the end of my sata cable. all the pins on the drive are intact. if i just plug the cable back will the device still work?

 

[SkyNetRising]

I don't know.
Just try it.

 

[little_me]

Unless you cause a short, most likely it will work.
If you look at the connector, the space between the pins on drive is quite tiny, with the supporting plastic part broken, it will 99% certainly cause a short sooner or later. (most likely sooner) Which can in theory break either the disk, sata port on motherboard or both.

Thus.. only to be tried once you have spare drive which you can immediately copy anything important, after that it is pretty much bye bye to the disk.

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

I've seen it happen before, as SATA ports aren't exactly very strong, and yes if you get it plugged back in with proper alignment it will work, but I wouldn't guarantee that bumping the system or cable won't cause the alignment to shift. I wouldn't consider using the broken port to be a long term solution. If you do happen to get the pins aligned, and port working, you might consider something like hot glue, to immobilize the cable end in such a fashion as to increase reliability and also allow you to remove the cable later.

 

[captaincharisma]

why risk damaging more computer parts when you could go get a new DVD drive for under 30 bucks

 

[bigpinkdragon286]

We're talking about a data connection on a DVD drive, not a hard drive with important data on it, and not a power connector. The most likely failure scenario is the drive won't show up during POST.

I do however agree that such a low cost item is hardly worth the time spent on trying to apply a band aid.