So, bought a new HDD couple o' months ago. Backed up a whole bunch of stuff on it. Was pretty happy. Not so long ago I took this drive out to plug in an old one (for the mp3 player in the car) stuffed it full of mp3s, then put it back in the car. But when I tried to put my new one back in again it didnt work =\ I didn't think much of it because I probably put the jumper lead in the wrong place (had some issues with that when first installing it, they seem to have labelled it wrong). Anyhow....... I tried again today. I went through all the possible combinations just to make sure. The bios says "Primary IDE master WD40blabla status good" "Primary IDE SLAVE SamsungSPblablabla staus good" The WD40 one is my C:/ drive, using it now, nothing wrong. The Samsung SP is this new one, that's having issues. So then it hangs for a second, then goes on. I get the old screen asking me if I want to start in safe mode. I say no, it brings up the windows logo and the bar starts sweeping across. OK, looks good, windows is loading. .... Windows is still loading....... Then - it resets itself. Does the same thing again. However, as soon as I unplug this damned thing, it starts up fine. So I unplug the IDE cable again so I can actually use my computer, and it looks like one of the pins, right in the middle, has sheared right off. (BTW I know one is supposed to be missing, there's another one, directly above and to the left of the one that's supposed to be missing). Interestingly, none of the other pins are even bent. Is that even possible? Is that what could be causing it to not work? Is there any way of fixing this? Is that covered by the warranty? Seems like the cable was too tight a fit. Second time this has happened to me, last time, my iPod ripped the central part of a USB port out.
I don't know how you've done it, but the missing pin is almost certainly the cause of the drive not working properly The pins are fairly fragile, so I should think they'll be covered by the warranty, but it might be worth emailing Samsung to check?
