Toshiba Sat. A300 - Need to replace SATA cables... Where and how?

Hi,
I need to replace the SATA cables that connect to the A300 hard drive.
Why? Because of this issue.

Where can I find these cables inside the computer? Can you please identify them for me in the picture below:

http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/Toshiba-Satellite-A305/disassembly-big/disassembly-process-16.jpg

And where can I buy them? Are these generic SATA cables? Or Toshiba/ model specific?

 

If I understand, there are no sata cables. Your drive connects to a drive header that is soldered directly to the motherboard. That connector appears to be right behind the seperate green IO board on bottom right. I can't really tell from that picture. The MS artical sort of wonders all over the place, any paragraph in particular?

So, in plain English, are you having drive disconnects? What errors specific to your notebook? When did this start? Have you opened the laptop? Have you replaced the drivers or OS?

sorry, not much to go on here...

 

A post by GeorgeR. in page 4. I'm not being able to find a direct link to the post, but find the quote at the end of my post.

My Event Log Viewer shows "event 11 atapi: The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort1" (Port1 is connected to my hard drive). I get Intermittent hangs.
This happend suddenly. I've removed all software installed recetly, same happens. It's no virus or malware either.

Are you sure there are no SATA cables? I know what you're talking about, but I assumed there wer somewhere some SATA cables...

 

I'm sure you probably already tried this, but make sure you have the latest BIOS: Toshiba Support - Homepage

Here's a pic showing the SATA connector, not sure if you can actually replace it

click to enlarge

If you can buy a SATA plug, you can probably find it here: Epson, HP, Toshiba, Konica Minolta, Canon Parts & Accessories - National Parts Depot

Does your laptop have a secondary hard-drive slot? [looks like the A300 model may support 2 harddrive bays]. If so, perhaps try plgging the harddrive into the 2ndary slot.

 

I think you have a driver problem or your hard drive may be failing. "This happend suddenly" bugs me.

I'm very sure that your main "C" drive plugs into a right angle connector that is in turn soldered directly to the M.B. My SECONDARY drive does have a short ribbon cable coming from the header to MB due to the inline drive configuration.

Try running the free Crystal Disk Info to look for any SMART errors. Anyting critical should be hi-lighted by the program. Also look for non recoverable sector and CRC error counts.

I forgot to add that your article appears to refer to desktops, THEY use short SATA jumpers to the M.B.

 

Indeed there was a second slot. Thanks (hadn't notice it). Connecting the hard drive to this slot didn't solve anything, so I guess my theory of the problem being in the SATA cables can be discarded. But it's not a BIOS problem either.

I've run Crystal Disk and the only problem that showed up was with the reallocated sectors count... I'd say this wouldn't cause a problem. But it maight really be a problem with the HDD.