Need advice on broken L-tab on SATA port

Hey everyone. I've been having a terrible time diagnosing some Memtest fails on my first homebuild, and with all the removing/reattaching of components, I ended up snapping off the L-shaped tab on the SATA port of my Western Digital Caviar Black (1TB) HDD. I also bent the pins, but none seem to be broken off. Is there anything I can do to salvage it? Even just to copy files off of it?

Any advice? I've searched the forums but haven't seen recommendations for this situation in particular. I was thinking about getting the pins mostly straight, and then trying to put the tab inside the SATA cable and putting it back over the pins - would that work? Seems unlikely that I would be able to get the pins fully connect this way... (Consider the fact that I am not electrically skilled. I have a soldering iron I have used exactly once to fail in repairing a pair of headphones).

Should I take it to a repair shop? Is this the kind of thing they could fix easily or at least help me recover my data (worth $100 to me, easily)?

I can post pics if it helps.

Thanks in advance..

The cheapness of those connectors has frustrated me to no end, as I've had this very same thing happen to two of my drives.

Both times, the L shaped piece of plastic broke off inside the SATA cable. This usually allows you to guide the contacts into the cable, saving the drive, though you lose the strain relief inherent in the connector, requiring you to support the cable somehow. My 1TB Hitachi has been running for months like this without any problems.

It might be possible to put the piece of plastic into an SATA cable end... Without it, I don't think there'd be enough pressure to make the contact between the drive contacts and the cable. A computer shop would probably be an option, I'm sure they've seen it before.

that happened to me a couple weeks ago. scared the *^%(^& outta me as I had valuable data on there.

what i did is exactly what adelphia83 described. i tried supporting the cable afterwards with some regular tape, but it wasn't really doing anything, so i yanked it and it has been running fine since.

Yeah, thanks guys - that's what I was thinking I would do. Tried 2 mom and pop shops and they seemed uninterested. Not sure where else to try in Chicago, but I might try just leaving the tab inside the SATA cable as you suggest.

I also had a recommendation from someone to like try to straighten the pins and glue the tab back where it belongs, but that sounds a bit tougher to get exactly right.... Glad to hear you guys had success..

Here is what I did to salvage a Raptor that was deemed "garbage" due to that issue.

Go order/buy/grab one of the SATA to 4 pin converters that has the sata cable attached. It should be an all in one that will have both sata power and data combined going out to a sata cable and 4 pin molex.

Bend the pins that are free floating down enough that they are making a solid connection to the adapter when plugged in. TEST TO VERIFY

Test another 10 times to absolutely verify.

Heatshrink, epoxy, superglue, whatever the heck you want the drive to the adapater. It isnt covered under warranty anymore so MOD TIME!

I have a raptor that floats around that I did this to, 2? years ago. Zero issues and it has gone in and out of a number of systems and cases.

This happened to one of my WD Raptors that were in RAID 0. The L shaped bracket broke off inside the sata cable connector. I just VERY carefully lined up the pins and plugged the cable back in to the drive. Everything's been running for 2+ years like this. I feel like a cheap *** for not buying a new drive, but hey, it worked.

I glued mine L shape bracket back on. Been running fine for a few years like that.

I have lucked out and found damaged/chirping hdd's of the same model cheap/free and swapped the pcb's. It may be worth the effort if the data is critical.