external hard drive repair

[Dud plays]

I have an external usb hard drive that I'm trying to repair, I've taken it out of the case and saw that the micro usb connector port became un-soldered, I can connected the port to a cable and then hold it to the board and get power to it, but my computer doesn't detect that it is a drive. Any ideas what I can do or why that may be?

[KenjiUmino]

external usb harddrives are usually regular SATA drives with a SATA to USB converter board slapped to it. just remove the whole converter board and connect the HDD directly to a SATA port on your mainboard

[manikyath]

3 minutes ago, KenjiUmino said:

external usb harddrives are usually regular SATA drives with a SATA to USB converter board slapped to it. just remove the whole converter board and connect the HDD directly to a SATA port on your mainboard

this.

 

and if you want to keep using it as an external drive.. get a new/different enclosure.

[KenjiUmino]

19 minutes ago, manikyath said:

this.

 

and if you want to keep using it as an external drive.. get a new/different enclosure.

this²

 

BYOD (bring your own drive) enclosures can be had for cheap.

 

just put the HDD in a new usb enclosure after backing up your data from the "broken" usb drive and confirming that the harddrive is not physically damaged (no defective sectors or anything) 

 

 

[ttam]

You can buy a $10 enclosure to turn it back into a "portable hdd"

[JacobFW]

19 hours ago, KenjiUmino said:

external usb harddrives are usually regular SATA drives with a SATA to USB converter board slapped to it. just remove the whole converter board and connect the HDD directly to a SATA port on your mainboard

Yup.  I would recommend doing this and backing up any data you absolutely need off the drive, then put it inside another enclosure.  The USB bridge interferes with some of the ATA commands, and in cases where you're backing up/recovery data, you do not need that at all.