My friend has a PATA HDD that has 2 of the IDE pins missing from the back. Is there any way of still using this HDD? Anyone know of anyway to fix this? Thanks for reading. Incarn

i suppose the answer is try using it and see what happens. I trust you know that they usually have one missing in the middle. two rows of 20 pins but with one missing in the middle of one row. so 39 pins in total. i had one where i accidentally broke a pin trying to straighten it but it continued to work fine. i suppose some of the pins are more critical than others.

On an IDE connector pins 2,22,24,26,30,40 and 43 are all ground. Pins 32 and 44 are unused and pin 20 is missing. Pins 32 was used in ATA-2 but is unused in ATA-3 onwards. If the missing pin(s) are one of these then it won't matter. Stuart

If one of the pins were critical, what would be a way to jury rig a fix? Place a piece of metal in the ribbon to make contact with the missing pin? Thanks in advance, amtk350

If one of the essential pins were missing there is nothing you can do except find a suitable sledge hammer and destroy the data on the hard disk before throwing it in the bin. The chances of a pin in the ribbon making contact where it is supposed to and staying there must br about 10,000:1 Stuart

Thanks for the help guys! I can finally make a final decision with what to do with this HDD! Incarn