Hard Disk dismantling

The star screw heads are AKA torx, although the standard sizes seem to slip easily on HD screws. Sometimes its possible to grind an old flat blade screwdriver to catch two of the points, if all else fails bite the top of the screw with heavy duty diagonal cutters and twist, this usually loosens the screw enough to spin out with a ground flatblade.

Not sure what you mean by concave threaded head but if you can get hold of it with the cutters you might have a chance.

Thanks Ian. Sounds like you've been there! Have also been considering drilling out the screws as I do not wish to reassemble and use!

BTW, concave is like looking at the *inside* of the screw head and there appears to be a sort of thread there. Can't get at it with nippers as it's inside!

Torx is a brand name, the generic would be a spline driver.

Since you need clean room conditions and lots of other very expensive gear to service a HD, I'll hazard a guess that you're after the magnets maybe - in which case use a small chisel to bang a slot in the screw head.

Try these torx bits (I have T-4514 and its managed just about every "torx" job I have done in the last 10 years, including a hard drive). You will surely find them useful for other future jobs too

Or try this from Jaycar, it has all the bits you will probably ever need.

It has 100 bits in it. I've got one at home and found it great for taking just about anything apart including hdds. On the topic of old HDDs just be careful of the magnets, they can give a nasty bite. I've also found that the only way to get the magents apart if they attach to each other is to slide them off.

HTH

Andrew W

magnets, platters, motors or that flexible conductors that go to the head?

Uusally they are Torx and I think I obtained my set from Jaycar. The mixed pack in red rubber. Unfortunately, not the super small one I've encountered recently.

Thanks all for the reply. I was looking to extract actual components and not rebuild, so in the end I drilled out the screws OK. You are right about the magnets. Pretty powerful! Incidentally, what is the material the platters are made from? Some sortof magnetic glass compound?

Both glass & aluminium have been used for platters. AFAIK the magnetic coating is a ferromagnetic epoxy that is spun on to get a dead even coating and baked hard.

. . .

right about the

Those magnets are powerful enough that you can perform an interesting experiment. Find a strip of thickish aluminium that will fit through the gap in the magnet. If you touch the magnet you will confirm that you can't pick up aluminium with a magnet. Then dangle the strip so that the lower end hangs in the gap of the magnet and then let it drop while watching carefully. Andy Wood snipped-for-privacy@trap.ozemail.com.au

An even better demonstration of this is to drop a supermagnet down a length of copper pipe. I have a magnet the size of a marble that takes ~5 seconds to fall 30 cm, before dropping out the bottom.

Clifford Heath.

All the platters I've extracted from 8", 5", 3.5" and 2.5" drives are aluminium based.

I've seen ones from the old washing machine era that were glass(?).

You need a Torx tool. There are about 8 standard sizes in this format.

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JANA _____

I am trying to dismantle some hard disks. I am encountering some fasteners that are meant to be tamperproof, one in particular that has a concave threaded head. Also the usual star point heads (not Phillips). Is there a source in Aust of hard disk dismantling "screwdrivers"?