[hans5849]

When i reinstall XP i always unplug my other drives to avoid accidently formatting one and when i did apparently the SATA power broke off of my main hard drive. The hard drive that has EVERYTHING ON IT. Torrents, Downloads, MY BACKUPS (including porn), games, and everything else. So when i warranty this to WD can i get my drive fixed or will i get a totally new one.

Side note: im going to attempt to use the molex connection on it, but i don't know if that will work.

[El_Presidente_Pufferfish]

why wouldnt the molex connector work?

[hans5849]

no, i just havent tried it and i don't have any extra molex connectors their all used by something.

[MaesterB]

Molex should work.

However, if the drive was physically broken, good luck on warranty. They'll treat it the same as dropping the drive. In other words, you're fucked.

[Mr. Ali]

ya, the NEVER fix the drive and send it back, they replace it with a refurbished one. they fix your old one and send it to someone else.

[hans5849]

what about my data, theres a lot on that drive i want

[superman]

so what exactly broke? i can't seem to decipher what you mean by "SATA power broke off"

[basketofkittens]

Originally Posted by supaman

so what exactly broke? i can't seem to decipher what you mean by "SATA power broke off"

Yeah exactly. I would be busting out the soddering iron if I had to...

[hans5849]

the right edge of the SATA power connector, the horizontal part to be specific.

[superman]

the black support thing?

[jag_e_fattig]

you should be able to either solder on a molex or get a new circuit board for the drive

[ivwshane]

Once you get the drive back up and running and you have windows installed on a different drive, search downloads.com for utilities that recover lost data (I used one before but I don't remember the name). It worked pretty good for me when I tried it.

The only problem is that you might need another drive to put the recovered data on.

[Goofus Maximus]

I take it this is unamenable to the duct-tape method of emergency repair? I've never seen one of these things, so I don't know, but if it's just a plastic piece that broke off, and the electrical connections are still intact, I'd think that some duct-tape or soldering iron solution could get you running long enough to back that stuff up to another drive...

[hans5849]

[Canadian_man001]

YOu maybe able to find an drive of the same model on ebay or something... then just remove the controller board and put on the one you could buy. I vedone that before with drives that have had bad controller boards... simply replaced the baords and put it back in my computer. If now you coudl find an older serial drive that has a fried controller board and solder on a new plug... ive had to do thigns liek that before too

[oblivious_maximus]

If you can't get the drive to function again, be prepared to get raped if you want the data recovered. My buddy had a drive die on him that he wasn't prepared to lose the data on. It cost him over $1000cdn (and a new drive to put the data on) to have a data recovery company get his data back.

I'd be pretty wary of opening up the drive if you want your data back - the professionals have Clean Rooms where they do that.

I'm gonna have to agree with Goofus(and others) though, if it's just a piece of plastic, there should be some kind of duct-tape workaround.

[hans5849]

well i can't find the piece that broke off, but im going to try the molex connector then get my data off of it and RMA it