Hi FerrersWay
Many thanks for getting this far. I have now removed my head unit and disassembled the hard drive and cable.
I have done this because my music tracks on the HDD (via Jukebox) were jumping, and my satnav occasionally rebooted. A sure sign the HDD is struggling.
My recommendation to you (if you still suspect you've damaged the flex cable) is to reflow all the solder joints.
This is daunting as the pitch looks like it's only about 0.8mm, however, it is possible with a temperature-controlled soldering station and fine soldering iron tip.
To me the solder joints on the HDD connector look fragile and it is these that should be reflowed. This is assuming you haven't spotted any rips in the flex.
If you feel uneasy at all about doing this yourself, I can have a go for you if you send me the flex.
So I have now removed my hard drive and plugged it into my W10 PC and taken an image.
I used Clonezilla Live (
http://www.clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live.php) to create the image, and then burn the image to a new 60GB PATA hard drive I bought off Ebay for £8.
I have reinstalled the new hard drive into the head unit and all is well.
Note that during the cloning process, I did notice that the original HDD was very noisy. This would explain the poor tracking performance.
I didn't bother to re-size partitions on the new hard drive as I wanted to see if this would work at all first. But that would be a logical thing to do using W7 or W10 partitioning tools.
So I have a HDD image available if anyone needs/wants it. It has my sh1t on it (one Daft Punk album, and sat nav destinations, etc) which you can clean up. It also has only the 2008/09 sat nav stuff.
Lessons learnt: Be careful when you install a new Pata HDD - the original has the male connector proud of the casing. If you buy a HDD that has the connector shrouded by the hard drive metalwork, the metalwork will make contact with the hard drive connector on the flex cable. If this is the case, add a strip of Kapton tape along the edge of the new HDD shroud to insulate it.
I'm attaching a load of photos to help anyone else who wants to try this.
Next steps:
1. I have ordered a 32GB CF card and Pata adapter off Ebay and intend on trying to load the HDD image to the CF card and install it in the 2.5" HDD space in the head unit. This should eliminate any fragilities associated with the HDD.
2. I need to somehow load a later version of the sat nav - 2011 or better? - any help with this appreciated.
cheers
Dave