Managed to break off the USB connector from the circuit board of the external hdd drive. It's a Seagate 1TB SATA drive, 2.5" and 12.5 mm thick.
The thickness is causing a problem to find a new external drive, I tried this one from PBTech but it is too narrow, and seems like every other one for sale only fits 9.5mm drives. Would rather not buy an externally powered one.
Does anyone have an older, bigger, WD or Seagate external hdd that is broken but you still have it lying around so I can recycle the case?
Something like this:
http://support.wd.com/product/download.asp?groupid=303&lang=en
or this:
http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-Expansion-Portable-External-ST902504EXA101-RK/dp/B001SJVU24