Is my Alienware M18xR2 dead? SATA connector fried

Hi,

So this morning I smelt a burning smell and immediately the laptop shut down.

I opened up the backplate to take a look and noticed the hard drive connector was fried in the middle of the connector. (Please see attached pictures)

Is this worth fixing? Both the SATA cable and connector are fried by the look of it. Or should I just bite the bullet and get rid of the computer?

Many Thanks

Mustang




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the other solution would be to remove ur disc drive and put in a HDD/SSD adapter like i have done. The Bios still detects it as a CD/DVD boot device, but it boots from it no problems, i have a 2tb SSD in mine

 

Hi,

Where are you plugging it in? The connector on the board is damaged too. Or do you mean you’re booting from USB?

Many Thanks

Mustang


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the internal blu ray/dvd drive the m18x has uses a sata interface, same as that connector, but its underneath the palmrest. so you would have to do what i did, remove the screen/palmrest etc and take out the dvd drive and put a HDD adapter in its place

 

Oh right, ok, where did you get the HDD adapter from and how did you secure it in place?

Thanks for your help


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one of these for example: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/SATA-2nd...864249?hash=item2843c7dfb9:g:CqgAAOSwiKdcWuA8

 

you have to remove the bracket off your original disc drive and put it on that adapter, theres an ifixit guide on removing the disc drive

 

here you go https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Alienware+M18x+CD+Drive+Replacement/122612

 

Oh wow, if that works that would be amazing. Thanks so much for your suggestion, I’m going to buy that now. I’ll let you know


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yep no problem, id suggest if ur going to go thru the hassle of doing that, put a decent sized SSD in there so u wont ever have to upgrade it lol. let me know how it goes