While doing spring cleaning in my parts storage I found two old hard drives of mine, which had broken off SATA connectors. They were among broken hard drives and I wasn’t sure if they are still working. Apparently one of them had its’ port already soldered at some point and I didn’t remember why it didn’t stay that way:
Problem in it’s glory!
I tried soldering able to the pins, however that didn’t work out. Plan b it is!
Bend the signal pins out of the way
Initially I only wanted to have pins on different levels so they wouldn’t stick to their neighbours. Turns out using one side for groun and other side for signail is best solution.
Than I flushed all the through holes on SATA port with solder to be able to attach signal cables.
Soldered straight to the board
It ain’t pretty, but it holds. Connecting ground wires after that was a breeze compared t it.
Looks much worse on the inside.
I connected drive to the PC and it’s humming along nicely as it’s being backed up.
Transfer speeds are not so ghetto
Whith first drive working along nicely, I got on with second one. Finished much faster as I knew what I was doing and could prepare connection properly. Secret lies in pre-bending wire to desired shape.
With second one I knew what I am doing.
Preparation equals results and… drum roll, here it is:
Looks much better
Laptop Doctor Blog 