The plastic piece behind the metal teeth-like pieces on the SATA slot (the connection from the hard drive to the motherboard) has broken off when trying to install this brand new hard drive. Dell has offered to replace the hard drive but this hard drive has ALL of my data on it. Please help. Can this piece be replaced or fixed to allow it to be installed and the data removed? Please help
No it cannot. You will need to go to data recovery to retrieve the data.
Thank you for your help. I just wanted to let you know what happened. I took the hard drive to Geek Squad Saturday morning. I was told there was nothing they could do they would send it out for data retrieval; the drive was a level 3 problem. For a 250GB drive it could be as much as $1700.00.
I went home and found the plastic piece that broke off the back of the SATA prongs on the hard drive. I then used super glue on a toothpick to put this piece where it goes. Using 2 popsicle sticks, I was able to straighten out the prongs. I held my breath and put the hard drive back in the computer. I was able to boot up on this drive and get all my information off of it.
I just can’t believe that this worked. I guess you can never say that it can’t be done!
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I guess not! I guess necessity truly is the mother of invention. 
