2 SSDs in 1 External with a broken Connector Piece.

[bukari]

Item in Question: Seagate Backup Plus 4TB Broken

One of my External Hard Drives ended up losing one of its gold teeth, and refused to run. Normally, when this occurs, I give up on my Hard drive, and put it into my PC by opening up the shell... What I encountered was a case entirely unique to me:

http://imgur.com/a/O5UUE <- Has More Pictures



After opening my Hard Drive and seeing that the External Hard Drive housed not one, but two SSDs, I got worried. I tried putting one into my computer and it asked me if I wanted to reformat it. I promptly refused. My assumption is that the middle piece, which sported 2 inputs from BOTH the SSDs into a single output was the master board that dictated that they were technically one Drive. I am now at a loss for what to do. I need to recover those files, but I am unsure of the means to progress:

1) Buy an Identical SSD, and open it up, in the hopes that the merger piece is simply that, and holds no data whatsoever.
2) Try to run the SSD without the gold teeth, and risk corrupting my data.
3) Solder the Gold tooth back on and risk destroying the merger piece.

Has anyone encountered this issue before?

[drHDD]

Most likely it's raid0. You need to use r-studio or ufs explorer or winhex to rebuild and to be able to copy your files. Or you can use yours variants - they should work too.

[lcoughey]

Those are 2.5" hard drives, not SSD's.

Let me know if you require remote assistance.

[fzabkar]

A competent technician (from your local TV repair shop?) should be able to solder a USB connector to your PCB. You could even cut off the end of a USB cable and hardwire it to the pads on the PCB. Otherwise there are free tools that will assemble your RAID (mdadm, ReclaiMe).

[bukari]

drHDD - It's RAID 0 indeed. I found that out after digging. How does one go about to using one of those recovery tools? Will I need to first repair the connector piece?

fzabkar - If that 'competent technician' damages the connector board (I assume it's the PCB? I'm not that good with the lingo), will I still be able to recover my data if I manage to find a connector board from the same company?

[bukari]

lcoughey - That sounds great. If ever I can't resolve this locally, I'll contact you. Thanks so much.

[bukari]

May I ask what happens if I use the wrong PCB on my Hard Drives? Will that initiate a data wipe?