Broke sata port hard disk for cheap.

[Fordiesel69]

On the big auction site there is a large capacity drive for really cheap that have a broken sata port. I have many broken hard disks in my collection that I harvest magnets out of that have good ports that I can solder. My question is my mind is going to the seller just snapping off the port to make people think the drive is repairable. Would you risk it?

 

[cptbarkey]

The internet cant tell you how good your soldering skills are, but do report success/fail
I hired a specialized service to repair the main box on my Ram 3500, 80% of the lights didnt work at all, he did a good job.

 

[Kira]

If you've no opportunity for inspection or communication with the seller, you gotta go by gut.
How much we talking?

 

[Rand]

how large is large? what price are we talking about?

 

[Pew]

Nope. I would never buy a used drive. Not worth the risk of longevity, botched repair, and my time if/when the drive fails again and having to deal with the data.

 

[berniedd]

I have tried used hdds in the past. Even if cheap enough, they were problems in some, and were not useable. Where the drives worked, they generally did not last long enough for me and were not worth the gamble that they were.

 

[Fordiesel69]

It was a WD 4TB for $15 shipped.

I decided to pass. My luck is the drive would be toast and someone snapped the port off on purpose. I dont like to think like that by default, but Iwould have enjoyed soldering on a new connector with my hot air station if I knew the history of the drive. If it worked I would have gotten a great drive. Otherwise 1 hr down the drain and 15 bucks