Is it possible to disassemble a hard drive? Disassembling the HP pd500a external hard drive
The hard drive (HDD) is designed to store information on a laptop and, unfortunately, is one of the most vulnerable components of a computer. In this article we will provide brief instructions on how to troubleshoot basic hard drive problems yourself. At the beginning of work, it is recommended, if possible, to make a duplicate of the information stored on the disk. There is a high probability that after repair, information from the hard drive will be deleted without a trace.
Diagnostics and causes of laptop hard drive failure
The HDD is a small platform on which a magnet, a package of disks, a rotating positioner frame, and a head that reads information from the disk are located. The disks rotate at an average speed of 720 rpm, and even higher when installing applications. Of course, intensive work can lead to wear and tear of HDD components.
The main reasons indicating a hard drive failure:
- The HDD makes clicking noises when operating. This is the most common malfunction and indicates mechanical damage to the hard drive components. There can be a lot of reasons: dust, foreign objects, wear of the read head, damaged disk surface due to an impact. Often such a malfunction occurs in the first three years after purchasing a laptop. To determine the problem, you need to disassemble the computer
- The hard drive makes an intermittent hum when operating. This characteristic, repeating sound indicates wear on the disk read/write head.
- BIOS does not see the hard drive. The cause of this trouble may be operational errors and due to mechanical damage
It is possible that the disk may not be located by the system or may work with errors even though it is fully operational. When disassembling the laptop, you should check that the drive jumpers are installed correctly and that the cable connecting the HDD to the motherboard is in good condition. These small and easily corrected nuances can cause disk failure.
Preparing the hard drive for repair
The advantage of all laptops is the ease of access and replacement of all computer components, so even those who are not particularly “friendly” with technology can remove the hard drive and prepare it for repair.
This rule applies to replacing the hard drive. We will not give a plan for removing the HDD from a laptop; there is a sufficient amount of such information on the Internet and they differ depending on the laptop manufacturer. The greatest difficulties can arise in HP Pavilion laptops, where you need to remove the keyboard to get to the hard drive.
Note: Removing hard drive components, such as the circuit board or cover, yourself will void your computer's warranty.
DIY laptop hard drive repair
Oxidation of contacts
Contact oxidation is the most common cause of hard drive failure. This problem is easily fixable and does not require special skills or time to eliminate:
- We take out the hard drive and unscrew the external hard drive board.
- We find the data transfer interface contacts on the board; they are usually located on the side of the board and are arranged in two rows.
- We inspect the contacts for damage, darkening of oxides, carbon deposits
- Using a regular office eraser, with light friction we get rid of carbon deposits and oxides on the contacts
- We treat the contacts with cotton wool moistened with an alcohol solution
Bad disk head
If you hear an intermittent monotonous hum or crackling of the hard drive, then there is a high probability of a breakdown of the hard drive's reading head. When the head is faulty, it is impossible to repair it; you will have to replace it with a new one; such a part is called a donor. The donor must be from the same company as the part being replaced. Remember that replacement must be carried out using gloves to prevent dust from getting on the disk components.
Replacing the disk head is carried out in several stages:
- Remove the hard drive from the computer and use a Phillips screwdriver to open the hard drive cover. Opening must be done carefully, being careful not to catch the magnet and the gasket.
- To remove the heads, you need to sequentially remove the magnet and stops, rotating the disk behind the spindle axis, remove the heads, then unscrew them and remove them. We also perform this operation with the donor disk; after removing the head from it, we place it on the faulty disk
- Reassembling the disk in reverse order
Faulty disk surface
The surface of the disk (the block of magnetic plates) is very vulnerable, as it is constantly in contact with the moving head. Due to a faulty head or mechanical shocks to the laptop body, scratches and dents may form on the surface of the disk, which lead to unpleasant sound during operation, as well as loss of information from the disk. It is often worth replacing the disk head so that there are no more problems with the surface.
Damage to information on the drive
In case of software errors or damage to the magnetic plate unit, the necessary information may be deleted from the disk. And if, if a block of plates is damaged, only part of the information can be restored, and only in special services, then accidentally deleted information from a computer can still be restored if the disk sectors on which it was located were not overwritten.
To restore information, there are many specialized utilities, such as: R-Studio, Undelete Plus, HDD Regenerator and others. Programs of this kind are easy to use: you just need to install them on your computer, scan the disk space and restore the detected files.
Do-it-yourself hard drive repair is a labor-intensive procedure that should be performed by technicians, not amateurs. It is also worth remembering that in the event of mechanical damage, the information on the disk will almost certainly be permanently deleted after the HDD malfunction is repaired.
Good day.
If your external hard drive no longer appears when connected, or shows no signs of life at all, do not rush to throw it away and write it off. After sitting for 5-10 minutes with a screwdriver, you can try to repair it and restore functionality.
In general, I do not professionally repair hard drives (I only load them professionally), therefore, everything described below is just my experience and my point of view.
Important! Based on what is written below, you can damage the disk and lose all the data on it. If there are important documents on the disk, it is better to take it to a specialist service center. Everything you do below in this article is done at your own peril and risk.
"Repair" of external HDD
In general, of course, the word “repair” is too loud in this article, but there is no other way to convey the meaning...
Not long ago they brought me an external hard drive that refused to work: when connected, a light bulb (LED) came on and immediately went out, then the hard drive did not react at all until you unplugged it again and connected it to the USB port. The drive, by the way, is a fairly popular model today - Seagate Back Up Plus Slim 2 Tb BLACK.
Rice. 1. External hard drive Seagate Back Up Plus Slim 2 Tb BLACK
A little theory
An external hard drive is a small box with a USB cable, inside which hides a regular hard drive and a small board (controller), a kind of adapter from a USB port to the SATA input of the drive.
So, very often it is not the disk itself that fails (unless, of course, you dropped it), but this scarf. By the way, in many disk models it is very thin and fragile, it can be damaged once or twice.
Therefore, before you give up on an external hard drive, you can try to open it, take out the drive itself and connect it directly to a PC/laptop, or insert it into another BOX.
How to disassemble an external drive
Specifically, the Seagate Back Up Plus Slim 2 Tb BLACK model is very easy to open - just pry off the lid with a knife (see red arrow in Fig. 1).
Important!Not all disk models are so easy to disassemble. Some are generally sealed “tight”, and to open them you need to break the case (at the same time, there is a high risk of killing the HDD itself).
By the way, there are often cases when, upon opening the case, you will see detached contacts, a crack on the board, and other defects - if you have soldering experience, you can try to restore the board.
Actually, in Fig. 2 below shows the external drive as it looks from the inside: a small board/adapter connected to a regular 2.5-inch drive. Nothing fancy...
Rice. 2. External hard drive - inside view
Rice. 3. Disk removed
The next step is to connect the drive to your computer/laptop. There are two options here:
Instructions: how to connect a hard drive from a laptop to a PC -
Rice. 4. The ejected disk is connected to the PC
So, the disk I removed turned out to be completely functional. By connecting it to the SATA port of the computer, I was able to copy all the information from it. In general, having purchased an external BOX, it still serves faithfully...
Rice. 5. External container (BOX) for the disk - looks the same as if the external HDD was like this originally
The motive of the article is this: before you throw away your old non-working external HDD, check the disk itself, perhaps you can “repair” it so easily and quickly.
That's all for me, good luck!
Yesterday, I came across a faulty Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 hard drive (HDD) with a capacity of 500 GB. Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 entered the market in 2011 and, one might say, was one of the most popular and modern drives at that time. The price/quality ratio was unmatched.
In this article I want to briefly talk about the structure of a hard drive - what it consists of. I am sure this will be interesting not only to me, but also to you! Previously, when I came across such hard drives (faulty), I did not disassemble them, but simply threw them away. Which I regret a little now.
But why this article now? Everything is quite simple, at the moment (2018) hard drives of this type (or even more modern ones) are everywhere, and few people do not know what it is - a hard drive (HDD). But time passes and they are being replaced by modern SSD drives, which are faster. Conventional HDDs are gradually losing their positions, giving way to SSDs. But while SSD drives are very expensive, even small ones, they will not completely replace HDDs anytime soon. I will talk about SSD drives in the next article. I hope by that time I will get one that is not working properly so that I can take it apart.
First, let's define HDD and begin our analysis.
Hard disk drive (hard (magnetic) disk drive, HDD) is a storage device for storing information based on the principle of magnetic recording. It is the main storage device in most computers.
Disassembling the hard drive
This is what it looks like externally:
View from above
Bottom view
We won’t dwell on this for long, I’ll just say one thing: upon visual inspection we see a black aluminum case and a printed circuit board with connectors.
Starting day, remove the printed circuit board:
This is where it gets more interesting, isn’t it?
On the cover, which is slightly included in the frame, there is a rubber gasket ( 1 ), which protects against dust getting into the disk case.
Of course, what immediately catches your eye is the rigid aluminum plate ( 2 ), covered with a layer of magnesium oxide, on which all information is stored. Depending on the volume (500 GB, 1000 GB), several magnetic plates can be used. On our hard drive, there is only one such plate.
Above the plate there is a read head ( 3 ), which, due to the very rapid rotation of the plate, does not touch the disk. And that’s all, because at such speeds, an air gap is formed, so it prevents the read head from touching the disk.
During operation, the spindle ( 4 ), on which the plate is fixed, rotates at a speed of 3600 to 15000 revolutions per minute. Just crazy speed.
The read head sits between two very powerful neodymium magnets ( 5 ).
Neodymium magnet– a very powerful permanent magnet, with high resistance to demagnetization. Over 10 years, such a magnet will lose only 0.1-2% of its magnetization. It is susceptible to corrosion, so it is often plated with nickel, which gives it a metallic sheen.
We can’t see anything else here, so we move on. We remove all elements of the hard drive:
It's more clear this way
Here we have a plate, a spindle, a pair of magnets and a head with a coil. Unfortunately, the photo quality leaves much to be desired, but what can you do?
That's probably all. Thank you for watching.
Disassembling an external hard drive, the process in most cases is not complicated and quick. But as it turned out, this does not happen with all disks. Once I got my hands on the HP pd500a external hard drive, everything was a little more complicated. After the fall, the disk did not want to be detected through the USB port and nothing could be reached. Having decided to disassemble and try a direct connection to the computer via a SATA cable, to extract at least some files.
With most drives, you simply pull out the top and we get to the hard drive itself. In this case, it was not so simple. After several attempts, the case did not give in and in order not to break anything, I looked for information on how to disassemble an external hard drive on the Internet, but apart from instructions for connecting to a computer, I did not find anything else. Therefore, I decided to write a small guide, maybe someone will find it useful. Looking ahead, I want to say that the hard drive does not have the ability to connect standard SATA, USB is soldered onto the board itself.
It was immediately clear that the case is held on by plastic latches. Having taken the pick for disassembly, I began to look for where to hook in order to disconnect the body.
Disassembling the HP external hard drive pocket
At first glance, a simple and convenient case with nothing superfluous.
As I already said, not seeing any cover or part that could be easily and effortlessly removed, I began to look for where the picks would catch. After turning it in my hands for a few minutes, I saw two slightly visible holes on the top of the case.
The place where we will start has been found. Picking up a mediator ( you can use a simple plastic card, but do not use screwdrivers or other metal objects, otherwise you will damage the case), we try to disconnect the fastenings.
By prying and passing along the entire length of the upper part of the body, the lid should lift slightly.
Having finished with the upper part in a similar way, we use a pick on both sides of the case, our external hard drive. You may need to apply some force in some places, but be careful not to overdo it or break the plastic latches.
Having removed the top part of the cover, all that remains is to remove the hard drive itself from the case and remove the rubber stands, which serve to ensure that the drive does not create unnecessary noise during operation.
In order to get the HDD, we simply lift it up. There are no more fastenings, so he can safely take it out.
This is how it should look disassembled. On the upper part of the case, which is on the right in the screenshot, you can see nine latches that held our case so tightly.
As I said earlier, the USB port is soldered onto the board itself, but there is no standard SATA.
As you understand, it was not possible to connect the drive and check it, so I had to send it for service. Also, I want to say that you should not unnecessarily disassemble your external hard drive from the company. In any case, even if you do everything carefully, after disassembly, small cracks and small scratches may appear on the case itself.
This is a small guide for disassembling external hard drives from HP. If something doesn't work out, leave a comment and I'll try to help you. Also, do not forget to subscribe to RSS or Email to follow updates on.
Disassembling the HP pd500a external hard drive
If your hard drive fails, you can disassemble it into parts. But such a procedure requires certain skills. To properly disassemble a hard drive, it is important to know a few useful rules.
If you want to repair your hard drive, then know that you cannot open it at home. During assembly of the hard drive, a vacuum is specially created inside the box, thanks to which the device can operate for a long time. If you pull out a hard drive, it will become unusable after a few seconds of exposure to air. Therefore, you can disassemble the device only if you are completely sure that it is faulty. Before removing the hard drive, turn off the computer and unplug the wire from the outlet. If you are using a desktop computer, remove the side panels from the system unit. There are six bolts on the back of the cover. Unscrew them to remove the hard drive without unnecessary obstacles. Disconnect all wires and cables that are connected to the hard drive. Do this very carefully so as not to damage the wires. After this, you can begin to unscrew the hard drive mounting bolts. If you want to remove the hard drive that is in the laptop, first completely disconnect it from the power supply, close the lid and turn it over. Remove the battery from the computer. There is a special latch on the laptop body. Grab it with one hand, and with the other, press up on the back of the computer. Proceed carefully - to ensure that nothing breaks, apply even force. Then the cover will give way and you can remove it from the body.
Now you know how to disassemble a hard drive into small parts. Try to act slowly and carefully - then you will not damage anything and remove the necessary elements safe and sound.