Well its been abused for 3 years in crazy temperatures and something is broken. Cold mornings I go the no hard disk found message which went away after the car warmed up - I put up with it. Yesterday though the message wouldn't go away so I opened it up. A couple of things I saw...

1) I have corrosion on one of the corner mainboard screws - normal?
2) I have deposits of something between the connectors on the IDE-header
3) I think one of my pins is off the board.

What do you guys think? A simple clean of the board with a cotton bud? Or send it to someone?

Apologies for the pathetic photography. My excuse is I had not much light!

Corrosion on Screw - Should I be worried moisture is in the unit?


IDE Header - bottom middle shows my suspect connector. Note 'stuff' between contacts


Zoomed-in Shot of suspect problem

That IDE header has been resoldered by someone after it left the factory,
and looks good to me (from the photo, anyway). Check the cable?

The residue around the pins is the flux from the solder,
and is probably of the "no clean" variety (mostly harmless).

The little corrosion around the mounting screw doesn't look serious.
If you want to clean things up, then ground it and you (for static discharge),
and use a swabby thing moistened with alcohol.

Cheers

Thanks Mark.

That third photo... would it hurt to place a tiny amount of solder on it? Looks like its floating above the board and could worsen under the cold conditions?

I'm unsure how it could have been soldered - I bought it brand new from the firesale 5/6 years ago :S

I also noticed that my disk has been making really strange noises - like a low rumbling rough spin. Could that give the error message?

Cable looks good to me. I'll be cleaning things up and sticking in a new drive and see what happens.

Thanks for the help!

That looks like one of my solder jobs

I would be more inclined to say you have a bad cable. Look at the crimps.