IDE Pin Missing

[Heineken]

Alright, here is my problem. I bought a IDE hard drive a while back and used it for a while, its a 200GB from some small company, but it was really cheap, thats why i got it. My problem is that on the IDE connectors, PIN 39 broke off. It's completely missing. I went on a few websites to see what exactly pin 39 is used for, and found out that it sends the 'Drive Active' command. I coulnd't find any more detail on it than that. I'm guessing that if the drive is being used, that pin is sent a 1 bit to tell the computer that its active. I am wondering if anyone knows anything about this kind of stuff. I would really like to use the hard drive, but I don't know if that missing pin will cause data loss or even harm other parts of my computer. I hooked the hard drive up, and it gets recognized fine, and it shows up in windows where I am able to access all of the files on it. So I just wanted some input on whether or not Pin 39 is really necessary.

any ideas? insights? websites I can get more information from?

thanks!

[doctorgonzo]

That signal is apparently used to detect if another (slave) drive is on that IDE channel. Considering what the signal is used for, it would be a good idea to not put another drive on that particular IDE channel; keep it by itself on that cable. If it is working now, then you may be safe.

[Thebranded]

how are you at soldering? you could always solder a pin on. Use very little solder and minimal heat and contact time. of course this could destry the drive if you apply too much heat.

[rjfvillarosa]

If you can access the files on that disk I would copy them to other media and trash that hard drive, if one pin is broken off it will probably loose another one, save your files and get a new hard drive before you suffer a catastrophic failure, and can't get anything back.

[glc]

I also found one site that says that all pin 39 is for is the activity LED. However, I don't think I'd try running the drive with it jumpered to cable select - I'd hardjumper it to master or slave or single. If it works, use it.