1

I broke the little plastic piece on my hard drive port, like in this image

enter image description here

What can I do?

Btw I found this solution while searching online, but it's impractical

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oezp97xqdU

1 Answer 1

1

I'm hoping you had the broken off piece still.

I've done this with a broken USB port of similar construction so it ought to work. I'm recommending brush on superglue (I use daiso's house brand, but locktite has one that's well regarded). The stuff that comes in a tube's hard to control, and will more likely than not glue your fingers to each other than the right place. You'll also want a suitable pair of tweezers if you can't quite dry fit stuff properly.

If the pins are more or less in place try dry fitting it. Then get yourself a bottle of brush on superglue and apply glue to the place where the tongue is broken off and the grooves where the pins go in. Put it back in place and hold the tongue in, and push the pins down for a snug fit.

That said, this is a temporary fix - it may break again in future.

For a long term fix, get another sata drive, preferably a dead one with the connector soldered on the same side as your drive. I've seen drives with those connectors on the 'bottom' or 'top' of the drive.

Desolder the connector from that drive (I use more solder to 'dilute' the solder joint - since those are higher temperature solder typically, and a solder sucker), and then the one you want to fix, and solder on the part. The pin traces are standard anyway, and the solder job looks like its newbie friendly. The connectors are a dumb component with nothing special.

While surface mounted, those are huge traces which should be trivial to fix. You may need to remove the circuit board carefully if the connector's on the 'wrong' side of the board but that's usually a snap on connector.

2
  • Thx for replying. I'll report back later with what happened!
    – madmada
    Jun 14, 2016 at 5:38
  • Ok, The first solution worked fine! Thx again @Journeyman Geek
    – madmada
    Jun 15, 2016 at 0:43

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .