Disassemble Seagate External Harddrive Enclosure

Step 4 Remove the Drive From the Board

When you turn the unit over (the board shielding face down) you will now see the hard drive. If you didn't already know, you can now see that the hard drive is one of Seagate's Barracuda drives. So all you have to do is unplug this thing and go, right? Not quite yet. First, you need to unscrew those four screws on the lips of the shielding on the opposite side of the hard drive. After that, there's a bit of shielding screwed to the top of the hard drive with two more of those damn Torx screws. These ones are a bit smaller, but you can use a 2.0 m/m flathead screwdriver here if you don't have the right size bit. Take the screws out, but save them because they need to go back in when you're done. Now, if you try wiggling the hard drive out under the shielding, you'll notice that there are small metal ridges on the corners of the drive that hold it in. If you go slow and careful, you should be able to wedge the shielding above these wedges just enough to pull the drive out, but I found the shielding to be extremely weak and ended up just bending it to unhook the hard drive - it's easy enough to bend back when you're finished.

IMPORTANT: Be careful as you pull the hard drive from the shielding as the power plug is still connected and wired. If you pull hard or jerk the drive, you may very well rip the cables out, which would make the enclosure useless for future use. Don't worry about the IDE connection - it's solid, not cabled.

Once you have the hard drive out, don't forget to put those two Torx screws back in.

Comments

[hynee]

I didn't need to remove any more Torx screws here, as noted by MightyYar on the intro page. The only Torx screws visible in this step are the 6 on the hard drive itself. Don't remove those unless you want to kill the HD!

[MonkeyAgent]

This must be due to differing revisions in the design, as mine definately had Torx in the enclosure itself. But as a general note, yes - NEVER REMOVE ANY SCREWS FROM THE HARD DRIVE ITSELF!