Breaking Project: Destroying a Hard Drive

A friend of mine recently decided to donate an old iMac, but he didn't want to run the risk of having his personal information (photos, documents, etc.) stolen off of his old hard drive.  Since I have a bit of experience with computer repair, I accepted the challenge of removing (and subsequently destroying) his old iMac hard drive.

Most of my experience with taking computers apart is with PCs, which usually have towers that house all of the computer innards.  The old iMacs, however, have everything housed in one big container along with the monitor.  This made me a little nervous, because CRT monitors can hold considerable charges (in the MegaVolt range) for a very long time, even after being unplugged, If mishandled, there is a very real possibility of electrocution (or glass shard explosions!).

Keeping all of that in mind, I was also well aware that Apple employs some tremendously talented designers and engineers, and I thought it would be pretty unlikely for such an intelligent group of people to put customers in danger every time they wanted to replace a hard drive or disk drive. I decided to give it a go.

The back of the iMac was incredibly easy to remove, as it was held in place by two screws.  Removing the back cover made it pretty clear that the monitor was housed separately from the rest of the computer.  The hard drive was hiding directly underneath the CD-ROM drive, and it only took about four more screw removals and a couple of cord yanks to completely remove it from the case.

The hard drive itself was a little more difficult to open, but only because it required a couple Torx screwdrivers.  Torx screwdrivers have a 6-pointed star for a tip, and while they aren't particularly common, they can be found at any hardware store without much difficulty.  If you need a couple for occasional use, but don't want to pay a ton of money, check out Home Depot (especially during holiday sales).  I got a 30-piece screwdriver set for $10, and included 3 or 4 different sizes of Torx screwdrivers.

The other thing about taking the hard drive apart is that many of the screws are hidden by foil stickers.  They are pretty easy to find, but if you are having trouble locating any of them, just remove all of the labels until you find the screws.  Keep in mind that this will void any warranty that you have on your hard drive.

Once the hard drive case was opened, it was just a simple matter of removing a few more screws in order to take all of the innards out.  My first quest was to remove and destroy the two metal platters that store the actual data (in binary form). I scratched them a bit with a key, but decided that this wasn't good enough, so I beat them with a hammer and turned them into hard drive tacos.

If this whole project was just about destroying some metal disks, I probably wouldn't have bothered, but there were a couple other things I was hoping to remove as well.  The central spindle, for instance, has a very fluid motion, and looks very cool and robot-y.  This piece is definitely going in my build-a-robot box.

I'm probably not going to be building an "interrogator droid" anytime soon, but if I did, the read-write arm would make a nice addition.  I'll hold on to this piece for now, just because it has an interesting sci-fi sort of look.

The last thing that I made sure to pull out were the two powerful magnets that are hidden in the corner of the case behind the voice coil and read-write arm.  The magnets are attached to metal plates, and stacked on top of each other.  Separating the plates may require pliers or a screwdriver (to pry the top plate up enough to grab it).  The second plate should be easy to remove.

Removing the magnets from the metal plates is very difficult to do because these rare earth magnets are very strong. The best method I have found is to get a couple large grippers, grab the metal plate on each side (don't grab the magnet), and bend the metal plate until it has curved away from the magnet.  Keep in mind that the magnets are quite brittle and very strong.  If you remove both magnets and put them too close to each other, you could could either shatter the magnets when they collide with each other, or you could get your fingers pinched between them.  For this reason, I'm going to leave these magnets attached to the plates until I have a specific use for them.