Having taken these out, it seemed that the top was glued in place as well as screwed, so I went round with the large screwdriver, prying it open. Turning it over, you can clearly see in the first picture the 6 screws round the edge of the ‘lid’ which needed removing. I first removed the circuit board, and put that aside. If you’re going to do the same, you may find a few differences in the details – type and positioning of screws, differently shaped fittings, and so forth, but the principles should be the same. I also needed a large flat-bladed screwdriver, which I used two or three times. The tools required for the job were a small screwdriver set, from which I mostly used a Torx or ‘star’, which I think was size 8, and a very small Philips or crosshead for a couple of screws inside: I’m sorry the PCB side is rather blurry, but I was less interested in that than what was inside. This the 3.5″ hard drive I took apart as my first experiment: Note that in the following post I’m describing taking a hard drive apart in order to reuse some of the parts, but have no intention of putting it back together, or making it work again as a hard drive!
