Disassemble Seagate External Harddrive Enclosure

Step 5 Utilize the Hard Drive

Congratulations, you now hold in your hand a hard drive Seagate probably didn't want out of its encasing. Nonetheless, it's a standard IDE hard drive and can be used as such. The enclosure should also be usable for future use. Just put your hard drive of choice in and put the enclosure back together.

EDIT: A good point has been brought up in the comments - if you do decide to put a different drive in the leftover enclosure when you're finished, be aware that you may run into compatibility issues. Besides the fact that the power source in the enclosure probably won't be sufficient to run higher capacity/rpm drives, you may run into problems with the board recognizing the drive, etc.

Comments

[gerlin]

Caution when installing a new drive in this external enclosure:
The drive-side of the metal box shield has some tabs that make contact with circuit board screws on the drive - a different drive may have board screws in different locations and you do not want the tabs contacting any circuitry.  The tabs are easily straightened inwards to avoid unwanted contact.

[inst666]

Please change the title to a more accurate one: "Disassemble External Hard drive CASE". I was hoping to find a guide to disassembling a drive. I don't need the data. I simply want to see what goes on inside one.

[MonkeyAgent]

Good point, the title has been changed to more accurately reflect its purpose. For the actual drive disassemble, you will likely need a good Torx bit (or if you're not picky, a good hammer/thermite/drill bit for the screws), and probably a flat head (for prying this open/apart... you'll see). The visible screws holding the plating on are really your only obstacle to getting inside. Also, I'm assuming that you know doing so will void any warranty you have and will likely damage the drive beyond reasonable recovery. Other than that, the magnets are fun, but be careful not to get your fingers pinched ;-)

[hynee]

I haven't seen any comments in this guide regarding HD compatibility. Mine came out with the Cable Select jumper selected (second from left), yours seems to have come out with Master (left-most jumper position). Trying all three of Master/Slave/Cable Select may help debug any problems.

[MonkeyAgent]

Once you've removed the hard drive from the enclosure, it should function the same as any other desktop internal hard drive - simply set the jumper to whichever setting you need (but definitely don't assume that the jumper will be a given setting).