Help with VAIO Hard Disk Connector Type

Hi


My Vaio is having alot of problems - I think its hardware problems more than windows.

model: VGN-FZ21S

Anyway, I want to remove the hard disk and try and backup all my data to another computer before I mess with the machine. But my problem is that Im not sure how to connect this hard disk to another computer based on the fact that I do not understand what type of connector it is.

I attach a picture of the connector.

I would be grateful if anyone can explain the details of the type of this connector and where I might get a lead that would allow me to connect this disk to either a USB port or to a SATA port on my other machine board.

cheers for any help.
Jon

 

That looks like a standard SATA connector to me, which is what that model supports as well. I have one of that docking stations that attach via USB where you can just plug a hard drive in, and it can be read as external storage, so you can copy the data off. Of course, this might not work if the hardware issues are to do with the hard drive...

 

You can use any 2.5 inch external SATA hard drive enclosure to copy your data to another computer via USB. These are available starting at 10$. If you point us to some online store product link, we can tell if it's the right one.

 

I had a very bad experience with that last year. Do it only if you are sure that you did not have AHCI enabled on that HDD.

 

AHCI is enabled on the SATA Host only. A HDD works out of the box when run from an external enclosure - you can't boot from it tho. FWIW, this has always been the safest and most comfortable way of backing up drives from other computers.

 

I don't fully understand the ins and outs of it, but this is what happened to me:

I bought a new HDD, put it in a laptop with AHCI enabled, formatted it and installed Windows 7 on it. All was well.

Later, I had to give the laptop back, so I took out the HDD and put it in an external USB enclosure. It never worked. It had data I wanted to keep, so I tried everything, including last ditch efforts like an MBR erase and low level format (giving up all thoughts of data recovery), but by then the damage was already done - the HDD was riddled with bad sectors. It was under warranty, but I had purchased it while I was travelling in another country, and Samsung told me the only way I could avail the warranty was to claim it in the country it was purchased in. Makes a nice paperweight. I'm out the cost of the HDD and the cost of the HDD enclosure I bought especially for it, not to mention the hours of wasted effort.

Other people have had similar problems.
Windows 7 x64 seems to corrupt HD's MBR in AHCI Mode

P.S. sorry for hijacking this thread.

 

I don't think AHCI did this to your HDD, I guess it was a hardware defect, perhaps on the enclosure? I have backed up dozens of HDDs for friends, colleagues etc. and never had such a problem. Since AHCI is today's standard when it comes to SATA drives, I would have encountered issues like you did for sure - didn't happen. I think it is absolutely safe to just take any HDD, attach it to an external enclosure and work with it over usb. You can also use eSATA - see my sig links.

 

I wish I'd known you at the time. Would have saved me a lot of grief.

Enclosure works perfectly with another HDD that I bought.

Just to be sure AHCI was not to blame, have you done this on a new HDD that was formatted during Windows 7 setup while AHCI was enabled in the BIOS?

 

Yes I usually install Win7 right to new drives. AHCI is enabled as default in almost every laptop. In some, you can't even chose IDE/compatibility mode. I clone HDDs often at work, sourche HDD in enclosure, destination HDD in laptop. No issues so far.

The only issue I had with Win7 and its formatting was when I connected my 2TB samsung ecogreen with newly created NTFS to my hacked Dockstar. linux' ntfs-3g corrupted the drive ("Drive needs to be formatted before use", windows explorer said, chkdsk reported "The Volume Bitmap is incorrect") and it took me 5 hours or so to recover my files, reformat and copy back files. After all I could fix it in 1 minute as I found out the second time this happened. Just do a fixmbr and/or chkdsk and it repairs the corrupted filesystem automagically. Problem solved. HDDs originally partitioned and formatted in Windows XP did not show this behavior with ntfs-3g.

Anyways, there is always a way to solve such issues.

PS: see it from the bright side, now you can build a fancy HDD speaker:
HDD Speaker(tune up) - YouTube

 

LOL You know, it might actually sound better than the Z1 speakers.