Hi, i am blessed to have an almost new Dell E520, Intel G965 chipset, dual booting Vista HB with XP, but on which I evidently shorted Sata connector #4 on the motherboard. It was hard to see, and I gently removed the cable but the end was still STUCK in the mobo (I know, the clip...). The PC was off, but I stupidly tried to rejoin the plug and see if it would work when I booted up, and while no warning, etc occurred, that port will not work anymore even with ANOTHER OK gear cable. It is switched on in the BIOS, along with all other Sata connectors, but no drive is detected, though they work on the other connectors.

I am glad it did not affect the rest of the board. Comments are welcome but is there a way to run two drives off one data connector? ThanksThere are a few different solutions...
If there is a local PC repair shop in your area contact them to see if they do board level REPAIRS. They can replace the connector fairly easily...expect to pay 40 to 50 Bucks.
You could also buy and install an addon SATA card that will give you 2/4 additional SATA ports if you have an empty PCI slot on the MBoard. ( You may want to consider a combo card that has Bluetooth connectors as well if you are looking at any Bluetooth devices )

The nice thing about this dilemna is it didn't take the HDD out with it as it easily could have.

Good Luck and let us know...THANKS Patio from your prompt reply. Yes, the HD and PC works fine, thank God, and right now i am running 3 HD's on it, with an external IDE pata drive sometimes.

As i am looking for the most economical solution, I think I will go for the card. This mobo has one PCI Express x16 connector, one PCI Express x1 connector, and two PCI connectors, whatever the differences are, so there is room. Or maybe a USB sata enclosure would be handy. The PCI express slots are for video cards...
The regular PCI slots will be fine for your needs and most economical. I grabbed a 4 slot SATA PCI card with one Bluetooth slot after the Holiday's for 28 bucks.Thanks again for the tips. No problem.
Let us know how it goes for you.
You may have to re-install the SATA drivers and/or the drivers that ship with the addon card.