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How Can You Straighten HDD Pins?
racerx509 writes: "I just did something thats probably going to cost me much. I was reinstalling my hdd after trying to ghost the partition for another pc, when I jammed the cable in wrong. The cable is keyed and the keyed side was in correctlty, so I figured that it was going in right. However, I have severly bent several of the pins. The HDD will no longer detect even after I attempted to straighten the pins. Pin #11 has receded into the aperature and pins #15 and #16 are seriously bent. I've straightened them out with tweezers as much as I can, but it looks like this drive is gone. I would replace it, but i have some very important data on it. Does anyone know of a way I could straigten the pins and pull receded ones? If not, what about a good data recovery service in the Atlanta area?"
Mhm, I once had a similar problem with my monitor cable, where some pins were receded, too. I had to open the plug to pull them out again. I think the bent pins are not the problem as long as they are not pushed in!
Perhaps you could open the hd carefully
(i don't know what model it is) so figure out the best way to do it, and try to pull Pin11 out again!
Life sucks.
Since you wanted to replace the drive anyway, I guess money isn't much of a problem here:
I suggest you buy a same (similar might work) drive, unscrew the controller board and replace it with the one from the new drive. Presto!
I frequently buy boxes of broken hardware at hardware markets, and usually there are more that one drive of the same type in there, and I have fixed a lot of drives this way...
If you are really brave, you can even straighten the pins later (when you get the board of off the drive) and possibly have two drives then!
Sorry for the poor grammar/spelling
Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity
Then an old trick is to buy a duplicate drive and swap controllers. But you have to make sure that the drive you buy and the one you own are really the same model.