Fixing a Broken SATA connector on a HDD
Вставка
- Опубліковано 10 лют 2025
- SATA connectors on a drive can fail easily, and this video I go over some ways that a drive with a broken drive can be made usabe again, and fix my drive by soldering a cable onto it.
My Western Digital Green Power SATA drive had the exact problem...broken and bent connectors. I purchased it on Amazon for a small price. I had lots of important data on the drive so I purchased another one from Ebay. I removed the damaged circuit board as was shown here, and replaced with the board from the new drive. SUCCESS!!!!
Link
Glad to see I wasn't the only one to have issues with these Toshiba NAS drives. Pretty sure someone messed up the batch of plastic used for the connectors in at least some of them because it is insanely brittle and snaps with almost no force. I actually had one pull away from the board when I was unplugging it straight, leaving the leads perfectly fine. Manufacturers defects like this make me hesitant to purchase from them again, even if the price was reasonable.
Just got a new drive because my last Toshiba failed after 2000 hours and after unplugging it the SATA port broke clean off, connectors still in tact...
Sadly can't find much about this issue online.
@@lupnetraamdid you find a solution? Had the same problem yesterday.
@@akela2109 I was able to insert the exposed contacts into the broken off plastic SATA connector that was stuck inside the SATA cable, drive works now.
@@lupnetraam Oh I might try to do so too. Thanks!
exactly the reassurance I needed to do this to one of mine. thanks
The three grounds are beneficial for signal integrity more so than actual grounding I think. Love your content btw
He said that - "for signal interference"
Here because I broke mine today on a brand new Toshiba 8TB FML with the force of merely bending the sata cable as the side panel got put on.
Well done man 🙌🏽😁😁
Amazing work! I was thinking of doing the same to a broken SATA connector but my broken connector is the one on the motherboard of a laptop. So fingers crossed :D
Did it work? I have the same issue
@@SpinoPrimeOfficial Nope, didn’t work.
Just bought new Toshiba 12Tb HDD. Snapped the SATA power port without much force applied while putting it in drive’s socket.
Nice.
Hope I will find a solution - will try to find a person who can change the port from other drive.
My first Toshiba ignited into flames at the power connector at exactly 90 days.. It was my new backup drive for all the other drives I had, but the fire destroyed those, too. So much precious data is lost. Toshiba refused to replace the drive, but Amazon did. Then that power connector broke the first time I unplugged the cable. Amazon sent me _another_ one and it has last 8 years until yesterday when the housing just crumbled for no reason.
Today I got a salty email from support stating that they DO NOT SELL replacement parts nor will they provide them. Dicks.
I'm wondering if the SATA connectors on Toshiba drives specifically are weak as I've encountered this same issue on only one other drive and it was a Toshiba. The drive was set aside with the cable still attached and a deflection of only a few degrees liberated the plastic backer from the pins. I've been trying to swap the drive into a new system (it was fine in the old system as I was able to plug it in with the broken connector as a spacer to ensure contact with the cable side and wasn't in a position where it would be subject to any movement) and was looking for a way to "fix" this issue without swapping the IO board on account of them being half the price of the drive. While this fix doesn't lend itself to swapping in and out of a drive "toaster" (dock), it is certainly a more permanent solution for fixing the unstable connector. Thanks for the upload!
Yeah I was going to hack an old 500gb drive, but this idea looks good. tested continuity, now sycking my self up for the soldering
they are weak... its recycled plastic ..rubbish i had same problems with toshiba 6tb
Why they didn't make this inner part of connector from steel, at least the smaller, data one? These IT engineers are nuts, would cost maybe 30 cents more. I mean the "L" tongue would be from steel, with isolation layer on it, and then conntacts on it (cause steel is conductive of course)
brings back my traumatic years,
ANYONE WATCHING THIS, THE OP IS A EXPERIENCED PERSON I THINK... BUT MOST LIKELY ANYONE TRYING TO FIX THAT CONNECTOR BY SWAPING FROM A WORKING CONNECTOR IS GOING TO BREAK MORE DRIVES, OLD UNUSED DRIVES ARE STILL VALUABLE NO POINT BREAKING THEM JUST BUY REPLACEMENT COMPONENT
Thanks sir, my 6TB is being archived as I speak. My soldering was as dodgy as yours!!
Thanks for this I'll give it a go ✌️
I cut some plastic and glued similar détente pieces in place. If over time it doesn't hold, I'll glue the cable to it permanently to protect the pins, since WD hasn't taken it upon itself to fix a delicate pin problem. I mean, these large volume drives aren't cheap.
anyone watching this as ofr recent , if you must do something like this......use a female to male header and solder it on and then simply plug the wires into the female pins slots. will make this vastly less stressful
changing the board seem a bit drastic when it was merely some plastic that broke. think im gonna go with the soldering, actually im just gonna try using tape first, it will just be a one time event to transfer out data, a similar sshd will be so cheap anyways that i dont bother changing the board
The pins is seven so which ones did you use
Before this precision solder day from hell: purchase a full length SATA Combo Connector or just the Adapter. Then glue that to your drive.
Your cost $3-$6.
However even with my Dell AIO using the SATA Combo Connector it still broke while removing the HDD - thanks to Dell leaving 1/8" play in the cable.
thank you for this. just saved 500gb of data
Bro, thanks for showing this, i have a xbox one x and the sata on the dvd drive that port isn't snapped but cracked?
how would i figure out what cord goes were with a multimeter im not well versed in using those things
in which direction?? does it matter? Must sepcific pins in exact way?? I mean can i turnover cable ?
Thanks, i had the same issue
man all mine did was the plastic under the pin contacts broke off, i kept it towhere the pins wouldnt get bent and theyre still in good enough shape to plug in an hdd case, although theres no plastic tensioning contact between every pin so it doesnt work
As I can see you soldered to pin 2 - 3 - 4 - 6.....right? I got it now. It's pin 1-3-5-6. pin 2-4-7 are ground :)
is it correct? i am also busy with it
hey man, what if i have an identical hard drive with the same board, can i just swap the whole board instead of soldering the small plastic black piece? reply when you can, thx
I have tried swapping boards between HDDs before, and it often won't work. I believe the issue here is there is drive specific data on a chip on the board that tells the controller where defects are and other information about the drive. But if you have another drive you can try it, as I haven't damaged a drive by swapping a board before.
@@ElectronicsWizardry okay then thanks, so the specific data is unique between different drives? remember, its 100% identical and has same specs
I did a video testing this a while ago about swapping boards in drives of the same model. I think of the 4 pairs of drives I tested one pair worked and the other three drives wouldn’t work correctly.
@@ElectronicsWizardry that gives me some hope :) thanks!
Man, can you help me?
I need to know what the capacitor value of the tx and rx on the pcb, right on the line of the sata conection . I have a pS4 withou then and need to replace it, but i can´t do this wth the original smd, because is too tiny!
Where do you get the parts
lol @ 0:40. Whoever removes a cable like that deserves the trouble they're creating.
Like wall mains, you just pull it outwards. That'd be like yanking upwards, on the cable, not even the plug. Just WTF? lol.
how do you fix the power one?
The power one should be able to be fixed with a very similar method. Most drives only need 5 and 12v so you can skip the 3.3 v. also you can probably just solder in one ground pin.
@@ElectronicsWizardry yea i fucked it up so imma just replace pcb with a brand new one
very messy cant tell which cable goes where ty for guide 🤣
I have a fried Exos X18 sata board does anyone know if I can use an x16 board to replace it?
Typically you can't swap the board between drives. You might be able to swap the sata connections if you can solder them between them
Does any1 know where to get a ata sata cable 30v 6mbps and only has 1 locking thing
Hi everyone, you can just use your dvd writers sata connectors and plug it in your Hard Disk Drive (HDD) and it will magically work, i have also done this solution because i got this from the dvd writers, see the differrence between the sata connecters and dvd writers sata connecters
They are the same
i wish i could invent a scanner kind of machine which could scan circuit board of corrupted HDDS and pen drives with no issues. the scanner would have scanned all the files from the circuit board or from the internal storage with no cable.this would have been wireless and password or fingerprint protected which would differ from user to user
Love it
I have my connector stuck in the sata cable can someone help
i have the same exact one lol but a 4tb
can i send it to you?
what is the guy in the army called ? -soldier.what is a lump of earth called, sod. how do you spell? yes, solder, not sodder, hihihi
And wisdom is not wiping your knowledge in others' faces
I have the same sata cable too 😂😂😂