Bad Hard Drive - Not!

[videobread]

I had my first HD go bad about a month ago. I thought. It is a Western Digital Caviar 250 gig SATA that I bought new at retail. It started giving me problems and got so bad that I could not even reformat. It would just lock the system up in the middle of processing. It would not do a CHKDSK/F. I kept reading that the problem is usually a power supply problem and not a bad hard drive. (That is power to the drive/electrical connection vs a "power supply".) It ended up to be a bad SATA cable. The drive was not getting it's electrical connection. Basically it was an intermittent short where the cable meet the drive. My drives mount sideways. I now use special right angle SATA cables. The one that went bad was not a right angle cable. It was one I bent to make work back in 2003. It worked since 2003. Then went bad. The new right angle cables also have a metal clips on one side to ensure/force a good electrical connection. I'm back to never having a bad HD. Knock on wood.

[gll99]

Good find. New users would just assume the drive was bad. Sometimes the solution is simple but many don't have the technical expertise to trace a problem like that. Makes you wonder how many out of warranty hdd get tossed out because of data cable, ps power or connector related issues? I've salvaged a few older hdd myself that others gave up on as bad.

[TimA-C]

It wasn't a SATA cable supplied with an ASUS motherboard, was it? These days I only use SATA cables with at least one right-angled plug, which I plug into the drive. Whoever came up with the design of the SATA connectors deserves to be given a damn good slapping!

[redwudz]

SATA drives were designed to be 'hot pluggable', so they made the connectors easy to remove. So easy that they can fall out on their own. Right angle may help, and the clip is an even better idea. My new Gigabyte MB came with SATA cables with clips. A nice improvement. Most included MB SATA cables I toss in my junk box.

[videobread]

Funny thing my system did not come with a SATA drive in 2003. It was an add on. I had to run out and find a cable that would work with a side mounted drive. I paid about $20 in a local rip off computer shop. I now buy right angle SATA cables on ebay for $0.99 plus shipping.

http://cgi.ebay.com/12-Serial-ATA-SATA-Hard-Drive-Data-Cable-Right-Angle_W0QQitemZ3301...QQcmdZViewItem