advice on psu with stripped electrical contacts?

Do you know how the little sata connectors come with that little L shaped guide for both power and data transfer? I am talking about the sata female connectors and their power counterparts. Well, my little L shaped guide on the back of my WD 10K RPM Raptor broke off while I was removing the power connector. I had to wiggle it a little left to right and must have wiggled a little too much. When I put the power connector back in place I forgot I might have to be extra careful... and first no boot, and then the odor of plastic and electrical burning smoke along with a boot.

Half the power copper bits are stripped from the Raptor which is now in an external bay powered by a DC plug. It still boots and I hope to clone it as it has my OS. Still, I don't think I will be able to count on it for my backup drive which it was about to be. So there goes $179.00. Grrr.

My main question though is whether I should be able to use the PSU. It is a 750w PC Power and Cooling from back in the day before they were bought by OCZ. Thing has been great for five years of admittedly not hard core use. If I simply don't use that one connector, there are three on the cable, should it be alright? Using a flashlight to peer inside, it appears stripped/mangled pretty bad. There might still be some copper from the Hard drive that was stripped off. I just don't know enough about how the electricity works to know if it would be safe.

I can test it for hours in my kitchen while sitting with in arms reach, but when I move it to my gaming room, I can just imagine getting into an hours long session and suddenly looking to left and seeming Towering Inferno.

Any thoughts on the hard drive would be great also.

Thanks in advance,

-Grail

Is it a modular supply? I.e.: can you replace that cable? If not, I'd be very worried about shorts inside the connector. You can try cutting off the mangled connector and just wrap the wire ends good with rubber electrical tape and/or shrink tubing so you know you have no shorts.

most of pc power and coolings sata ports were the "press on" style, you may be able to just remove that plug from the chain and replace it, or just tape over the nicked parts in the cables that are left behind from the plug itself.

Hey thanks Ughmahedhurtz and Jstanthr,

Unfortunately it is not modular. Wishing it was real bad since yesterday. I hadn't figured I could get the thing off. Now I am wondering. I am going to see if I can find anything online about this "press on" style. I am beginning to hope that is what I have. I love the idea of being able to replace it. Or, I do have electrical tape.

Thanks for some leads.
-Grail

Ok, this is great. I almost have the thing off. I just freed three of the five wires. I can just use standard electrical tape to tape over? Should I wrap it twice? Three times? Also, do you know - Jstanthr or anyone else that can chime in - what the official name of those sata ports are called? Might a MicroCenter have them or are the something only a specialized Performance PC type shop would have?

-Grail

p.s.- Jstanthr, I didn't know what you meant by the little nicked parts but see them clearly now. Perfect description. :)

Ok, next question. About to tape of wires where I removed the psu "press on" style sata port. Two or three times when I first had a problem with this port it was connected to my OS hard drive and the system would not power on. Is that a sign of a short? Might my psu still be ok? It has run since. Might there have been some sort of fail safe in my PC Power & Cooling PSU that would have caused it not to start up and also protected it from harm?

Thanks!

Usually, if you have bizarre problems with it not powering on, you have a single wire bundle overloaded. For example, my brother was in bluescreen and random reboot hell for a while until he told me he had all 4 of his SATA RAID drives plugged into the same cable. As soon as I told him to move two of the drives to the other cable, it split the load and his system has been rock solid since. Give that a shot and see if you maybe have other things plugged in that are causing this. Most of the better PSUs (Thermaltake, SeaSonic, etc.) have separate, high-capacity rails so it's pretty rare that you'll overload them.

Worth a thought, at any rate.

Also, regarding electrical tape, there are two primary things you want to make sure you protect against:
1) Having the tape come loose by something else pulling on it or by bending the wire bundle, and
2) Having a sharp bit of bare wire or solder puncture the tape so it can touch the case or something else and cause a short to ground.

Tape is cheap. Use plenty. :)

What I do for wrapping the ends of a bundle of wires:

1) grab the upstream end of each wire with one hand, squeeze the wire with the other hand and pull towards the bare end of the wire where you're going to tape. This will usually stretch/slide the plastic jacket down and cover the end of the bare wire.
2) Start wrapping (overlapping each wrap about half the width of the tape) around one wire starting about 1-1.5" from the cut end and wrap until you have about one full width of tape past the cut end of the wire (should be about one extra wrap).
3) Lay another wire next to it so the cut end lines up with the wrapped wire's cut end, then start wrapping back up the wire to about the same spot.
4) Lay the next wire and repeat step 2, then continue repeating the above until you have all wires wrapped together.
5) Fold the end of the wire back onto itself, making the bend about where the tape starts.
6) Wrap around the taped bundle of ends and the part upstream of the bend so you have a nice folded bundle at the end (this will help prevent them from coming loose by pulling on them or from heat making the glue unstick, etc.).

Yeah, it's overkill but I've yet to have one short after doing this, including bundles I stuffed under the carpet in the floorpan of a truck.

Alright. I had to take a break. I will try all of this tomorrow. There is a computer repair shop I know of; I might stop by to see if they have a replacement sata port for the one I removed.

Thanks for pitching in so well Ughmahedhurtz and Jstanthr!

-Grail