(Bonus) Hard Drive Dissection Part 3

This next one is a bit of a bonus. It’s a 2.5″ 60 GB drive that I pulled out of a laptop when it flaked out. Fortunately the drive managed to recover itself long enough for me to retrieve the data. I was using it for a little bit as an emergency backup/transfer drive in an external enclosure until the motor made loud shrieking sounds and finally seized up on me.

As you can see from this shot, 2.5″ form factor drives are pretty small. This one has 3 times the capacity of the 3.5″ form factor drive from Part 2.

Two hard drives next to each other.  One is a 3.5 inch form factor and the other is a 2.5 inch form factor.

Under the cover it’s like a miniature version of the larger drives. Like the Deskstar, this one also uses an off-platter landing zone. This drive has two platters.

Hard drive with the cover removed showing the internal components.
Top cover of the 2.5 inch hard drive removed showing the internal components.

Unlike the larger drives, this one only has one magnet, presumably for space reasons. It’s just as strong as the magnets in the larger drives though.

Internal view of one of the hard drives with one of the magnets removed and sitting on the disk platters

The fully disassembled drive and its two platters

Disassembled hard drive with most of the components removed.  There are two disk platters sitting on the table above the hard drive chassis

A close up of the read/write heads, one pair for each platter.

Close up view of the read/write heads of the hard drive

Size comparison of two drive arms

Size comparison of the articulating arms of the hard drives

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