External hard drive has a faulty micro-b connector. How to get data off of it?

[mancesco]

Hi. I have a WD Elements Portable 4TB that has a faulty usb connector, the drive doesn't seem to even get power when I connect it to a usb port unless I apply a gentle amount of pressure on top of the micro-b connector on the drive, then the led lights up, but I'm not going to force it down just to get it working. The drive is out of warranty so I just opened it hoping to just put it into a new enclosure, but this is a usb only drive, there's no sata connector!

 

So, the drive is pretty much toast because of the connector as far as I can see, I already tested different usb ports and cables, and it's the drive for sure. I don't have any sensitive or important data on it, only some games backups which I could just redownload, but with my crappy connection I'd rather copy them over from the drive itself or it would take me a week or even longer. What can I do?

[lieder1987]

since they integrated it with the control board the only thing that would be possible is to try and fix the connector.

I would just write it off as a bad job and move on.

[mancesco]

Dang. Predictable, but still sucks.

[DigitalGoat]

If you are proficient with a solder iron you could solder a cable to the drive connectors (or get a shop to do it) just to enable you to salvage data, then dump the drive.