OT: LIF Hard Drive Connector
Turbo Mini Forums

My beloved Sony NW-HD5 mp3 player is dead. It uses a Toshiba MK2006GAL 1.8" HDD which no longer reads. Since I had no choice but to use Sonys proprietary sotware to install music on it, I am now in the shit. And it's in ATRAC3 format to make it even more awkward. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but so did laser discs. I dropped it into a local computer place who said they might be able to take the data off if I can get a LIF connector. They are having trouble finding one though. I don't fancy having to reload 400 albums onto a new MP3 (as it would take years and a lot of them are now lost or scratched) so I really need this to work. Also, I'm an annoying arse with punctuation and formatting of artist, album and song titles which would make the task infinately more time consuming.

Does anybody have any idea where I could get a LIF connector or have any other ideas for saving it?

Last thing, could I put an SSD in instead of the HDD to make it bounce-down-the-stairs-friendly? Would it work physically and would the player read it?

Please don't make me join the white headphone crew

Heres a link to the drive that is in it:
http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=Hard...rives/MK2006GAL

Thanks and please bear with me as I'm a bit of a tech retard

On 12th Nov, 2009 Paul S said:

I think Gary OS has taken over my role as the forum smart arse

Are you sure it's LIF and not ZIF on the HDD.

If ZIF (which seems to be the common format) try this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ZIF-CE-1-8-Micro-Dri...=item2a013e5ffa

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Get an iPhone and be done with it :-p

I have nothing more to add to this,

Edited by PaulH on 17th Dec, 2009.

Paul, you're a cock! haha

Rod, appearantly it is a LIF connector which is intended for devices that are not regularly tampered with and so they are difficult to find. I read somewhere that the two are commonly confused and the names seem almost interchangeable. That would explain why the computer place ordered LIF connectors on two separate ocassions and they were sent ZIF ones

EDIT: Spelling

Edited by GaryOS on 17th Dec, 2009.

On 12th Nov, 2009 Paul S said:

I think Gary OS has taken over my role as the forum smart arse

A quick search says they are essentially the same, just the cable on the LIF is slightly thicker because it's only Low Insertion Force rather than Zero Insertion Force.

See about half way down this

http://ziflif.info/ziflif/

So (theoretically) it should be possible to put a (thinner) ZIF cable adapter into an LIF recess....

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Thanks Rod, that sounds like exactly what I need to hear. I will read that link now and hopefully get the computer place to make some progress. I may even look into sorting it myself if they are reluctant to do anything

On 12th Nov, 2009 Paul S said:

I think Gary OS has taken over my role as the forum smart arse

But if the ZIF cable is half the thickness then maybe it won't connect properly or be held properly by the clamp?

I assume by connector it is the cable you want? Rather than the physical connector soldered to the PCB.

Yes, graemec. It is the cable I am looking for. You could be right about it not cennecting properly. Would it be worth a go anyway?

On 12th Nov, 2009 Paul S said:

I think Gary OS has taken over my role as the forum smart arse

Possible but if I was doing it and it seemed loose I'd try something like a thin strip of paper between the clamp and the cable. I've dismantled and re-assembled several of these connectors on thing like PlayStations, set-top boxes etc. where they use them for cables between boards and so long as the clamp pushes the silvered side of the ribbon cable down onto the contacts (once the cable is located in the slot) they allways worked again. But I never knew there were two different cable thicknesses until today......

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Rod, as you have experience with doing similar I think that would give me the confidence to try it. I think I'll be ordering a cable off ebay tonight.

Thank you for the help.

On 12th Nov, 2009 Paul S said:

I think Gary OS has taken over my role as the forum smart arse

It's got to be worth a try BUT, check the one I linked on ebay first, the photo doesn't show the short length of ribbon cable you need.

This one, for example, does

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1x-ZIF-CE-1-8-to-IDE...=item3efb10fbb2

But even if you get the cable and ZIF/LIF to IDE converter to work, you've still got to try and read the disk to recover the data......

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

Or try this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1-8-ZIF-Hard-Disk-ID...=item3ca1538cc6

Or even this

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Toshiba-1-8-ZIF-LIF-...=item3ca13ed697

Which specifically says LIF

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

OK, a little progress made on this (ish). The computer place had hard drive enclosures in stock (for ZIF connectors). The ribbon cable is actually wider than the connector. The one in the post above also looks wider. Can I simply cut the ribbon to size?

On 12th Nov, 2009 Paul S said:

I think Gary OS has taken over my role as the forum smart arse

Count the exposed (silvered) wires on the cable and the contacts in the connector housing.

If the numbers match and the cable has just a little bit of overhang without wires included you can trim it, ie, the backing material, but the number and pitch of wires in the cable must match the contacts in the socket.

Hope that makes sense....

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???

That makes sense Rod, thanks. I'll get the microscope out :) .

I just copped that the LIF connector can be disconnected from the drive as I've attempted to show in this pics below. Does this expose an ATA-100 socket beneath (the two parallel rows of female terminals)? Assuming it does, can I connect to this rather than the LIF connector?

Edited by GaryOS on 22nd Dec, 2009.

On 12th Nov, 2009 Paul S said:

I think Gary OS has taken over my role as the forum smart arse

I think I have now found a solution:

http://www.addonics.com/products/io/aaedt18ide25.asp

The HDD connector is an IDE 50 pin. I think the computer place actually thought that I had a ZIF connector, the ZIF ribbon they then ordered was too big, the assumed it was LIF and then had no idea what to do next. The connector they were tying to plug into is simply a component of the HDD board (the item shown half inserted into the IDE 50 pin connector above). This would explain why the ZIF ribbon has different width and terminal pitch to the connector on the board

Now to order the parts and hope the HDD reads

On 12th Nov, 2009 Paul S said:

I think Gary OS has taken over my role as the forum smart arse

If the ZIF/LIF cable connector just plugs into the back of the drive through a normal (but small) male/female IDE pin arrangement it seems to defeat the point of having the ribbon cable in the first place, unless they wanted to have the option of either type of drive.

But, yes, those adapters would do the trick.

I've used the 2.5" to standard 40 pin adapter myself to read laptop 2.5" HDDs onto a desktop PC. The only issue you might have is the IDE definition of master and slave. On a 2.5" laptop HDD it is defined by a jumper (just like a full size HDD) but the jumper is never there to set it as a slave because it's allways a master in a laptop, and the pin configuration is smaller than any jumper I've ever seen so I've allways had to unplug the second master device in the PC and use that connector. Obviously that is only possible if the PC motherboard has two IDE ports. If it only has one it's 99.9% certain the main HDD with the OS will be occupying the master position.

On the positive side, if it is a true IDE interface and won't read because the BIOS doesn't auto-detect it because the disk is on its way out, you can go into the BIOS and set all the parameters (cylinders, head etc.) manually which is the way I have been able to get data off failing HDDs.

Schrödinger's cat - so which one am I ???