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Have you ever cracked open a hard drive?

R

Riskhk

Senior member
I just got myself a broken hard drive and cant seem to fiddle with it? Are hard drives meant to be sealed? It Seems like there is something stuck in there?

Any ideas....im so bored...
 
If it's broken go ahead...but if it still works, don't. It'll start messing up as soon as it touches a non-sterile environment, IE your hands or the air.
 
Yep, pretty cool inside too! Just some reflective platters.

C'mon, what computer "cool person" doesn't have an opened hard drive for a paperweight on the desk???

edit: newer ones use weird allen key screws or ever worse, torx bit heads. So they're tougher to open, but still can be done.
 
I cracked open more than one. also took apart the guts. What was really funny was we had this guy who had pierced his......um........ thing. and the HDD magnet was sitting right on the edge of the desk. Well he got too close to the magnet and it attached itself to the sainless steel barbell he had in. Now if you have ever tried to peel one of those off a piece of metal, you know they don't let go too easily. Plus, just imgine all of the sudden having a piece of dnese metal suddenly attach itself to the front of your pants, and pinch your "thing" between it and the piercing. Needles to say, he wasn't feeling too good the rest of the day.
 
Yea the magnets in those things are really powerful. We have one on our fridge, and the only way to get the thing off is to slide it off the edge.
 
I got a few open ones hanging on the walls, old computer parts make really cool decorations, especially on the x-mas tree (all those free AOL CD-Roms I get in the mail!!)
 
ViperGTS and I disembowelled my 750MB HDD from my first 486. It was cool. We threw it up in the air only to watch it come down and chip the asphalt and not get a scratch on it. Hmm. Throw it down? Wow, bigger chunks of asphalt! Cool! We ended up destroying it by curbing it with my huge 14" 12oz hammer. Too bad I didn't have an axe just then.
 
I took one apart just the other day. I installed a sound card in one of the computers at work and found this old WD 255 Meg HD that was just sitting on the inside of the case, not hooked up to anything, so I took it out.

Pretty cool once I got it apart. If I looked really close, I could almost see the little letters written on the disk. AMAZING!

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<< Now if you have ever tried to peel one of those off a piece of metal, you know they don't let go too easily. Plus, just imgine all of the sudden having a piece of dnese metal suddenly attach itself to the front of your pants, and pinch your &quot;thing&quot; between it and the piercing. >>



ulfwald Could you provide a video of that for download? Please, that is all I want from you for Christmas.

PH
😀
 
Wish I could, just imagine this poor guy. Wit a strong hdd magnet attached to his &quot;ahem&quot; thing, and in pain. Now just imagine trying to pull that hdd magnet OFF! YEOWCH!
 
i've taken one apart. i used a dremel and created a slot on the torx (i think) screws. it was a 127 MB from an old IBM 486.

HDDs are meant to be built like a tank, and &quot;air tight&quot; it does have a vent ;-) which has a filter since it contains &quot;moving&quot; parts and the air is used to &quot;balance&quot; the r\w heads.

it was neat. ;-)

the shell SSSSSSSSSSSSoooooooooolid... {})!

if you get anything on the platters, you're sunk.
 
The magnets are located at the actuator (SP?), part used to move the R/W heads. Just be careful when you take it apart and not get your fingers (or some other part of your body HeHe) between the 2 magnets.
 
Yes, its did require some really small Torx screwdrivers. The platter is so shiny and smooth I use on us a mirron on my monitor to see who is sneakingup on me at work. There is also a really powerful magnet in there. It held it about 3 inches from a metal door frame and it flew out of my hand and stuck with a loud &quot;KLACK&quot;. Some one nearly thought it was a gunshot.

Windogg
 
damn i still cant crack it open...is the top lid connected to the magnet is that why its hard to remove...i tried cracking it open but the middle seems to be connected...i think i removed all the torx screws already...
 
HAHAHAHA! I opened one yesterday. Check for any screws under stickers (I found one under the label...). One screw was stubborn, so I just drilled through the nut. 🙂
 
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