Has anyone else had a SATA data connector break?

Archaea

Archaea

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I just had a new computer experience. I have a 1.5TB Seagate drive to which the SATA data connector plastic guide broke. The connector to my knowledge has not been under any stress! The SATA cable isn't even bent at a strong angle or anything. I was plugging in another drive and the cable fell off the drive and I thought it just must not have been connected properly to begin with. I tried to push it back on and it wouldn't stay. I realized that the darn thing had broke and I had bent a pin trying to put it on there without the little plastic guide! I managed to straighten out the pin, carefully reconnect the SATA cable, and (thank God) boot up successfully to pull my data off the drive. The plastic guide is stuck in the SATA cable! I guess I'll send it in for warranty repair after I pull my data off! Seagate ought to warrany this issue because I never put any distress on that connector!

I have no understanding of how this occurrred, without undo stress on the cable and SATA plastic! Has anyone else had this happen? I was quite surprised by the issue! The case I have has plenty of room - It is a Cosmos 1000 case! The two photos are the issue with the drive and the area of the case where the sata cables plug into the drives!!!

Drive issue - see plastic guide broke off!
16bd9qf.jpg


Case fit - I drew a red arrow above the drives home location. That's the original SATA cable - see how it isn't even bent!?!?
28814pe.jpg
 
Ive had a similar problem a few years ago with a Seagate hard drive and the plastic breaking. Since then, I've always been extremely careful when pulling on the cable to remove it.
 
Wow that is quite unfortunate.

While I have never seen a case where the entire connector broke off I have seen a PC I was working on where the "L" portion of the connector broke off. Luckily the flat portion with the pins was still fine so use of the drive was not affected.
 
Ironman77 - that's what happened here --- the L piece of plastic broke off and one of the metal pins was susequently bent (but I was able to straighten and and manipulate the connect to have it recognize the drive in BIOS after a couple times. It still recognizes the drive this morning, as I'm copying everything off. (stupid windows update reboot the machine last night) I'm thinking if my computer gets bumped in any fashion I'll lose my SATA data connetion and have to fiddle with it again!!! Here' still hoping to getting my data off!
 
It's happened to me twice on spare computers (thankfully). This is why right angle cables are kind of necessary.
 
wow would you believe 1.3GB of data has been copying over a 10/100 LAN connection for the last 24 hours! It still isn't done. Details view on windows 7 shows about 9 or 10Mb/s average....

--- but yes - it appears I'm going to be able to back all my data up! :D Yahoo!
 
Skillz said:
Ive had a similar problem a few years ago with a Seagate hard drive and the plastic breaking. Since then, I've always been extremely careful when pulling on the cable to remove it.
Click to expand...

I had it happen on a brand new Samsung DVD-RW. Just waiting for some other drive to fail so that I can use it's connector.
 
I've left my case side off and not messed with returning this drive cause it was working, but I looked up warranty status tonight and I'm still under the warranty period, but it looks like Seagate expressley prohibits warranty returns because of my problem - which is nonsense because this drive has never been abused and I'm the original owner. I'm going to write customer support, but probably not have much luck since they specifically mention that this type of damage is not covered. If the sata cable moves at all now, the computer locks up and the drive won't show up next time, unless I fidget with it to get it just right again.


Take a look at the LONG list of things that disqualify you from warranty repair.
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=14de3804f3333210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD
 
I've had this happen on two different old raptors before. Too fix it, I just carefully placed the cable and broken "L" tab onto the goldfingers and held everything together with silicone rtv applied around the outside of the connector. It's a little messy looking, but has worked fine for a couple years now. The rtv cures soft so you can still peel it off and change cables in the future if you want. Just be careful not to get any on the gold bits or inside the connector.
 
I've never had one on a drive break, but I recently noticed one of my SATA cables had done something similar. The edge opposite the contacts had broken off completely. Luckly, the sata cable sits pretty snugly beside the power cable on the drive that I was using it with, so it's still usable, but it deffinitly surprised me.

Part of me wishes that they still used pins. I've NEVER had one of those come loose on me while working on a computer, but the SATA cables tend to do it almost everytime I stick my hands inside the case (and they can be such a PITA to reattach, depending on the case and mobo layout)
 
no response from seagate support yet after I e-mailed yesterday asking if they'd support warranty on this drive given the situation.
 
I had that happen once while I was working on a computer. Some of the brands use a type of plastic which becomes very brittle when the circuit board is run through the oven they use to flow the solder.
 
dr.stevil said:
I've never had one on a drive break, but I recently noticed one of my SATA cables had done something similar. The edge opposite the contacts had broken off completely. Luckly, the sata cable sits pretty snugly beside the power cable on the drive that I was using it with, so it's still usable, but it deffinitly surprised me.

Part of me wishes that they still used pins. I've NEVER had one of those come loose on me while working on a computer, but the SATA cables tend to do it almost everytime I stick my hands inside the case (and they can be such a PITA to reattach, depending on the case and mobo layout)
Click to expand...

sata cables should have metal latches on them.... iirc, only the sata1 cables don't.
 
I have had it happen, not on the harddrives but on the actual cables, I dont know why but the fitting on all 4 of my funky cables just seemed to crumble, the plastic must of been cheap or it was a bad batch.

They were my funkiest looking sata cables too and I was pissed when it happened to each cable in short succession.
 
Seagate wrote me back, they will honor the warranty, though they said normally the L connector breaks are not covered by warranty. I linked to this thread, so maybe the pictures and details allowed her to see that I did not have the cable under any duress. At any rate, I'm happy to have the drive replaced. I'll begin the RMA process.
 
The SATA1 cables broke on me several times when I first started using them. Maybe it was a bad batch on the gigabyte mobo's I was using at the time, but never had a problem with the actual peripherals. Since they have added the metal latch I have never had a problem.
 
sata cables should have metal latches on them.... iirc, only the sata1 cables don't.
Click to expand...
There's no difference between SATA1, 2, or 6 cables and the latches aren't required on any.

The latches mean nothing other than it's a nicer cable.;)
 
Yeah ive had that happen a few times, normally its an older drive tho, so they just get crapcanned
 
I had a hard drive with a cracked power connector. All the metal parts were still there thankfully, but the plastic border(same part as on your sata connector) was cracked and missing in a few places, so the gold wires stuck out. Still worked fine, just had to be a little careful when connecting the power cable.
 
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