Broken Maxtor 4 Mini

[willag]

So... I have a 160 GB Maxtor One Touch 4 Mini that's broken. I forgot to detach the USB 2.0 Y cable from the external HD, and force was applied to it (placed under some clothing in my drawer... just moved into an apartment and maintenance crew has been coming in so I've been hiding my valuable stuff)... and, well, it got bent such that the socket on the inside became detached from the rest of the HD. I ended up taking the USB cable out and I could literally rattle the socket it attached to around. After removing the casing and playing around with it, I was able to attach the USB cable to the socket again, and if I move it around just right, I can make the blue light come on and have the hard drive boot up (or what sounds like it booting up), but my laptop is not recognizing it. Occasionally, it will also make beeping noises at me (which I can tell is not good).

So, is the sucker a lost cause? Or would someone be able to attach the socket again (I can sort of see where it lines up on the inside) such that I'd be able to recover the pertinent data from it? Or is the socket not even relevant? Is there some way I can bypass it and still get data from the external HD (if I didn't somehow damage it at all). I've pretty much accepted the fact that I've lost the data on the external HD; however, I don't want to give up on it if it is possible to fix.

Thank you!

[puntoMX]

Hello willag, welcome to the forums.

I never opend one of those maxtor drives but if you did and you came across something like this (click), you should be able to buy a new external SATA to USB 2.5" housing and place the drive in there. Your warranty is already been voided so there is nothing to lose, you can only win back your data and a perfectly well working 160GB 2.5" notebook drive as well.

If you have more questions, please provide visual material as well so we can help you out better .

EDIT: By the way, don't open the cover of that drive as shown in some pictures, you will destroy your drive when doing that.

[willag]

I don't have pictures yet, but here's someone who took theirs apart and posted pictures:

http://forums.techgage.com/showthread.php?t=3864

If you scroll down to the second picture, you'll notice that in the lower right corner of the HD there's a port that sticks out (I think it's refered to as a PCB plug). If you scroll down further, you can see more close-up pictures of the components, including the port/plug that the USB cable attaches to.

It's the port/plug that's become detached from the SATA drive. It was soldered on, and I suspect that if I want it working long enough for me to get data from it it would have to be soldered back on.

I don't care about being able to use it again. I just want it working long enough for me to get some of the necessary data off. If I need to buy DVDs or another external HD, whelp, then I gotta... I just want to get some of the data.

Thanks for the response!

[puntoMX]

I see no problem there, you can just take it all apart and buy an external 3.5" SATA housing and put the drive back in, you can use it as it was .