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Disassembling a Hard Drive

 

Caution – you are about to waste your time. Here is yet another way to divert your attention from the really important things that you should be doing instead of reading this article.

When photography depended on using film, it wasn’t important for the average picture taker to use a personal computer. Digital photography has changed this all and makes owning and using a personal computer almost a necessity.

Nowadays, many of us depend on a personal computer to help with our daily tasks and/or for our livelihood. I’d venture to say that many of you are on your third or forth or more generation personal computer – you’re no longer a novice computer user. As such, you’ve replaced a hard drive or two. And hopefully, you were prudent enough to have backed up your data!

Over the years, I have replaced many, many hard drives. For some reason, instead of depositing the dead drive in the trash, I toss it into a large carton and now have quite a large collection. Every once in a while, I pull a drive out and dissect it.

Why? Because I like to tinker and because I use a few of the internal component

If you want to follow along, I’ll show you how to extract some very powerful magnets and very shiny discs to keep as souvenirs.

The only “special” tools that I need are two mini-Torx drivers. I found them at Sears – a T5 and a T7 that cost about $3 each.

I have all of the other tools around the house – a couple of small screwdrivers and maybe a matte knife.

Hard drives are basically two sizes: 3.5″ drives found in most desktop computers and 2.5″ drives found in notebook computers.

Dissecting a 3.5″ drive is relatively easy because the screws and components are larger to handle.

This dead drive came from a notebook so the hardware is smaller. You’ll have to use more care in removing the hardware.

To open the case, you’ll need to remove the screws holding the top cover in place.

This small hard drive is made by Seagate and has six tiny Torx screws.

Additionally, the white label is concealing a final Torx screw.

I used the matte knife to carefully peel back the label to reveal and remove the hidden Torx screw.

When you remove the top cover, you’ll see the hard drive components similar to this photo.

The top platter is held in place by a single Torx screw in the center spindle and the bottom platter is held in place by a yellow spacer.

A pair of magnets (top and bottom) are also held in place by several Torx screws. To remove the magnets, you may first have to remove the small read/write head that’s held in place with a small screw.

Here’s my reward – platters and magnets.

You can make a very attractive wind chime from the two shiny, silver platters.

The tiny magnets are very powerful and are great for holding photos onto the refrigerator.

As the Car Talk guys say: you’ve just wasted an entirely good 10 minutes reading this article.

 

Written by Arnie Lee

 


1 Comment »

  1. Well, I wasted the time while my coffee was brewing. So I’m off to have a cup now.

    I have recovered a drive ONE time by swapping control boards from the same exact drives.

    Comment by Dan — April 2, 2011 @ 8:11 am

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