USB broke off circuit board,1 TB My Book Essentials,

I have about a 2 year old My Book Essential and when plugging into the usb, the metal port broke from the circuit board.  I was thinking about purchasing a Universal SATA Upgrade Kit from Apricorn http://www.apricorn.com/products/notebook-hard-drive-upgrade-kits/drivewire-ide-pata-sata-to-usb-hdd-adapter.html

and transfer to a new HD. 

Will this work?  Or should I go buy a WD 1TB My Book and swap circuit boards?

This Stinks

If the drive came with Smartware the data will be hardware encrypted by the board with the broken port. Look through the posts by fzabkar he has explained about the boards and fixing them. You can also send him a PM. You might try taking the board to an electronics repair place and see if they can solder on a new port.

Joe

what he said… You can see about getting a replacement board from ebay or something. But I recommend trying to get the connector fixed first.

Same thing happened to me. The mounting design will never last. This is a fundamental problem that should never have seent the light of day.

Really, why would Western Digital risk their reputation by releasing such a badly designed product ?

I will be contacting their Support dept and will be expecting a free repair. Anyone who has had similar issue should do the same.

Part of the problem is the solder they are now required to use is lead free and isn’t as strong as the old lead solder. I ddin’t like the design either there should be more than just solder holding the port on. A redesign of the case with a boss behind the port to keep it from flexing would help.

Joe

Yes, either a boss or perhaps a “luggage strap” type retainer around the connector, solder to the board and connector itself.

Problem is, even a tiny piece of metal would impact the bottom line profit significantly. It is more cost effective to deal with the fallout from a few RMA’d disks than it is to put a $0.004 bit of metal in millions of drives.