The Open Source Ministry Blog

I needed something fun to do, so I disassembled an old hard drive. Maybe not too old of a hard drive since the Maxtor 5T040H4 is a 40GB capacity drive and is still for sale.

WARNING: If you are not interested in seeing pictures of a dissected drive, please move along.

Since I am an antivivisectionist (unless it is truly necessary) I decided to make sure it was truly dead. We pulled it out of a decommissioned computer several months ago and I tried several times to see if I could bring any data up on it. No luck. The night of the dissection I tried once more by attaching my IDE to USB adapter. The motor started to rev up, but there was no clicking and the computer was not registering anything. Then the cable was knocked and the spinning drive tumbled several feet to a hard floor. For those who wonder, there were no signs of it claiming to not be dead or stating “I feel happy” or “I think I’ll go for a walk.”

I pulled out my Torx screwdrivers and went to work. I used T7 and T9 bits for the most part, for this they were almost interchangeable. There are 6 edge screws and two in the middle under stickers. Only one of them under the stickers really needed to be removed.

I removed the metal cover and the green panel from the back. I gave that piece away to a curious onlooker, but its removal was done by undoing the torx screws and then just yanking it off.

The platters are really shiny. I like shiny things, they are pretty. Here you see a picture of the platter, the armature, and the magnets for the server. It took me a long time to figure out how to get the magnet off. I couldn’t find screws for it so I just started to pry it off. I found it was being held on by magnetism. Next you will need to remove the screws holding the platters on, but don’t remove the platters themselves until you remove the armature by unscrewing it at the fulcrum.

Those platters are really shiny. I figured a reflective picture of my camera was in order.

Anyway, below is a picture of the removed parts. There is only 1 platter in the picture, but there were 2 in the drive. I thought that the magnet for the servo might be held by magnetism so I tried to pry it off. In the process I chipped the coating off of one corner. That little chrome chip is very strong for its size. I would still like to get the whole magnet off of the mount.

Next I have the empty casing. Indeed it does look cool. I want to remove the motor and spindle to see if I can play around with them, but I am very interested in the tiny black beads in the corner. At first I thought they might be there to dampen the electromagnetic waves from the ribbon, but they are not magnetic. Then I thought they might be some sort of graphite to hinder static. Now I think I know the answer. This is a seed pod and those are hard drive seeds!!!!

Could I grow my own hard drive? Just compare this picture to this picture:

I think I may plant a few seeds and see how they turn out. I’m just worried about watering them. While I do that I am looking for uses for the other parts as well. The platters will become decorations, and maybe one will be for seeing people when they come up to my office door. They would look pretty on the Christmas tree.