Cracking open a Maxtor hard drive
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Maxtor hard drive teardown
Maxtor hard drive teardown
ntI’ve always wanted to open and hard drive and take a good look at the insides. So when this old spare hard drive came along I decided to satisfy my curiosity by making a gallery for our Cracking Open series.
nt
ntThe sacrificial lamb in this case is a Maxtor 10GB drive circa 1998.
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Underneath the circuit board
Underneath the circuit board
Underneath the circit board is some padding and two sets of contacts. Interestingly, there are no plugs.
Tape removed
Tape removed
I’m not sure why there was tape on this side. Revoving the one piece of tape reveals the underside of the plate chamber. The drive, if it worked before, does not work now for sure.
Armature
Armature
A side angle look at the armature. There is not much room for error.
Magnet
Magnet
There are two magnets in the armature drive housing. The magnets are surprisingly powerful. I thought magnets were a no-no when it comes to hard drives, but I guess the problem is really random magnets.
Circuitry
Circuitry
This circuitry controls the movement and tells the read/write heads what to do.
Both magnets
Both magnets
It takes a great deal of strength to separate this housing when they are together — much more strength then I would have thought was necessary. I passed it around the office and watched my colleagues sttruggle to separate them — it surprised all of us.
Caulking
Caulking
The gasket around the top of the drive is tacky. It must make a solid seal.
Plates removed
Plates removed
The memory plates slide onto a central hub separated by the metal rings. The entire setup is seemingly very simple.
I see me
I see me
The plates make excellent mirrors.
Shine on
Shine on
There is a gash on this plate. I don’t know if it was there when I started this project, but if it was, the drive was dead.
Shell
Shell
Not much to the shell.
Read/write heads
Read/write heads
Here is a closer look at the read/write heads. As you can see they are very delicate. The mere act of removing the armature mangled the ends.
