Good day.

If your external HDD 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 don't do professional repairs. 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 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 it was external HDD initially

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!

Our little Drone got his hands on a 1TB hard drive from Western Digital(WD10EARS). There are already hundreds of hard drive tests on the Internet, but few people disassemble a hard drive down to the smallest screw. Let's take a look at our own copy?)

We were unable to unscrew the screws with a hex screwdriver, so we had to resort to brute force and... a power tool! In fact, I didn't have a suitable hexagon at hand.

The screws didn’t want to give up so easily without a fight...

And we managed to unscrew the last screw by bending the protective cover.

That didn't stop our little Drone!

There is a silicone (it looks like) seal along the edge of the top protective cover. It was glued very well and could not be torn off.

Here they are… hard disks with a mirror surface. Unfortunately, as soon as we removed the lid, the entire surface was covered with small dust particles...

The reading heads are located in a special holder in grooves. This placement prevents damage to the plates during transportation, as well as when the hard drive is simply turned off.

A very heavy hard drive...

Remove the board from the back of the hard drive. Between the hard drive and the back of the case there is a special sponge gasket that dampens vibrations.

The engine is controlled by 4 contacts, and the working heads are controlled by a whole contact group. The contacts interface is very thoughtful.

Motor control

Control contacts of working heads

Component base printed circuit board

This is apparently a hard drive cache memory made by hynix

Full payment

We notice the branding, manufactured by Foxconn!

Back view

The working head mechanism is located between two magnets. Apparently, the magnets are neodymium and have sufficient strength.

Coil of working heads. Using this coil, an electromagnetic field is generated, which allows the head mechanism to move in the magnetic field of static magnets.

Excellent engineering, beautiful shapes and lines... a perfectly polished surface.

Electronics of working heads. Look at the size of the contacts and the chip itself, imagine what the accuracy must be during the production process.

Coil power wires

Parking slots. Please note that a 1 TB hard drive uses only 2 disks and 4 working heads. The discs have an ordinary thickness, up to 3 mm. The recording density is very high. Damage to even the smallest section of a disk will result in the loss of tens or hundreds of megabytes of data.

Bottom magnet

The magnetic field is so strong that holding a magnet that is not screwed on can lift the entire hard drive.

Finally

In general, the 1 TB hard drive from Western Digital (model WD10EARS) has a fairly simple and well-thought-out design (which is very good), and at the same time, almost all of its components require pinpoint precision and complete sealing of the internal chamber. Opened at home, such a hard drive will certainly not work again!

We disassembled it solely to show its internal structure. Don't rush to scold us! The Winchester arrived to us almost non-functional. Further storage of information on it is no longer possible, because more and more are appearing bad sectors. This device has already served its owner quite well, earning its price down to the last penny.

What is his future fate? Let's see... perhaps we will be able to find him a new role, a new image.

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 desktop computer, remove the side panels from 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 mounting bolts hard drive. 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 press it with the other back panel computer from bottom to top. Proceed carefully - to ensure that nothing breaks, apply even force. Then the cover will give way and you can remove it from the body.

Some devices are not marked. If it is not there, you will have to open all the covers on the back panel one by one. The hard drive is located under a black film. There is a protrusion on the plug of its cable. Disconnect the cable from the connector. Then remove the securing screws. There is a protrusion on the hard drive case - pull it and carefully remove the device. Prepare a box for small parts, a hard drive, a set of thin screwdrivers and a knife. Wipe the work surface from dust with a dry, clean cloth. Remove motherboard, on which resistors, transistors, small circuits, etc. are placed. Unscrew the three main screws and carefully remove it. Under the board is the hard drive cover with all the details.

Unscrew the seven screws and remove the cover. Then remove the magnetic head unit. To do this, unscrew the two screws on both sides of the hard drive. Another screw is located in the center - unscrew that too. Be careful - the recording heads have powerful magnets, so you risk getting your fingers pinched. After this, unscrew the four screws and remove the discs from the engine.

The engine base is held in place by three screws. Unscrew them. There are coils located inside the engine. They rotate thanks to a glued magnet. Carefully remove all coils and magnet from the mount. After this you will be left with an empty screw. This completes the disassembly procedure.

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 necessary elements safe and sound.

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, on this moment(2018) hard drives of this type (or even more modern) are found 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. ABOUT SSD drives I'll tell you 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.

Sometimes a user needs to disassemble the HDD of his laptop: for example, for repairs, “donating” spare parts, or in order to turn a non-working device into some kind of decorative element. We will now tell you more about the analysis process in an accessible way and in Russian. Before you disassemble the hard drive from your laptop, you need to remove it. To do this you need to remove back cover portable personal computer, unscrew the screws holding the device at the ends, carefully pull out the drive so as to disconnect the connectors. Only after completing these operations can you remove the HDD.

What tools should you stock up on before disassembling your hard drive?

Before disassembling a laptop hard drive, you need to acquire the appropriate set of tools. To determine its composition, you need to carefully examine the drive itself. Different HDD manufacturers use screws with different slot shapes on the head, so there is no universal solution. As a rule, to disassemble a laptop hard drive, you need a small (“clockwise”) Phillips screwdriver and a key, the cross-section of which has the shape of a 6-pointed star (the so-called Torx). The dimensions of the screwdriver and wrench, however, must be selected individually, depending on specific model drive. The design of some HDDs does not contain fasteners with a slot for Phillips screwdrivers - in this case, only a key will be enough. It is also useful to have special flat levers that can be easily replaced with a regular stationery knife.

Preparing the hard drive for disassembly

Also, before disassembling the hard drive, you need to determine where the screws are located. The difficulty is that very often manufacturers place them under various stickers. In addition, stickers also act as seals: the product warranty becomes void if they are removed. Therefore, it is not recommended to disassemble the laptop hard drive yourself before the warranty period expires.

Disassembling a laptop hard drive

So, you have removed the drive from the computer, acquired the necessary tools, and located all the screws. How to disassemble a laptop hard drive? This operation must begin by removing the controller. A controller is an element in a drive that controls the drive and transfers data. Technically, the controller is implemented in the form of a printed circuit board, which is connected via a cable to the mechanical part of the HDD. Unscrew the screws holding the controller to the case, then carefully - so as not to damage the cable - turn it over. After this, you can disconnect the cable from the board. On modern devices very often the cable is adjacent to the board using contact pads, i.e. not attached to it. However, it is not recommended to abruptly remove the controller to avoid damage to the cable.

The next step is to analyze the mechanical part itself Laptop HDD. It should begin by unscrewing the screws holding the cover. Sometimes, in addition to them, manufacturers resort to various latches - this is where a stationery knife may be needed.

After removing the casing, you gain access to the internal mechanisms of the drive. The next step is to unscrew the screw holding the plates (“pancakes”) on the spindle. By removing them, you can also easily remove other structural elements: magnets, a parking space for the head, a block that moves the reading head. All these elements are secured with screws. It is worth noting that the magnets of the linear motor, which ensure the movement of the head, have extremely high induction - because of this, they are extremely difficult to separate from the body, even in the absence of any additional fasteners.

Disassembling a laptop drive should not cause any difficulties, provided that you have the appropriate tools and are careful when disassembling it. The main rule when working with such equipment is attentiveness. Do not make sudden movements or use excessive force: if you cannot detach a part, make sure that you have unscrewed all the screws, that the element is not held in place by a latch, and so on.