I have been encounting some problems with my Maxtor 6Y120L0. First the circuit board got damaged and I had to put another one to back up the data. And now it seems like it is the hard drive itself. It doesn't get recognized and I can hear some 'clicking' inside.
I have removed the top lid and can see the arm doing quick little moves once every 30 seconds perhaps (that's what makes the clicking sound.

But now that I have opened a hard drive for the first time, I am getting very curious to know how it works inside and how it is assembled.
I would really like to remove all the parts and then rebuild them again.

Does anyone know any good website or tutorial that would explain this in detail? I am doing this on a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 120gb 6Y120L0.

Thanks a lot.

You can't rebuild your hard drive. Once the drive is opened, consider it destroyed. Anything -- and I mean anything -- that is airborne will touch the platters and destroy it. Repairing of hard drives is performed by professionals in a "clean room." A clean room is cleaner than an operating room And although you may be clean, you're not that clean!

Well I expect you can forget about recovering anything from that drive. As I understand it opening a harddrive anywhere outside a clean room results in dust/fine particle contamination that will render the disk unreadable as the distance between the read head and disk surface is so fine that any contamination is potentially fatal.
That said, here's a link to some tech sites that deal with HDD assembly/internal workings
http://www.pmsupplies.com/datastorage_mfg.html

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Teach him to fish and you feed him for life.

I agree...once the hard drive case is cracked open, the platters are exposed to contaminants & the drive is toast

Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @8x210mhz
512mb PC3200
Ti4200/8X 128mb
WDC 60GB

Once the case of a hard drive is opened, you can use the parts inside for all sorts of creative desktop ornaments -- that's all.

One outfit takes the platters and makes them into desk clocks. Otherwise there is no real use for any of the parts.

If you are curious about any internals, ask first and we can direct you to sites that explain what you wish to know. Otherwise it can be an expensive learning experience.

If the drive was still inside the warranty range you just voided that option by opening the drive. They are sealed and the seal states the warranty is void if broken.

Other parts that you can not repair include the floppy (they are too cheap to bother) and optical drives (special equipment to calibrate them).

Richard

More pure baloney. You are not NECESSARILY going to hurt a hard drive just because you removed the cover, and let a little outside air in there.

HOWEVER, "Malko," you said

"First the circuit board got damaged and I had to put another one to back up the data"

and I notice this is a 120gb drive?????????

Let me just guess this. You didn't "the circuit board got damaged ", no, uh, uh, that is not what happened here.

Whut happened, is, you screwed with this thing till you killed it. You prodded around in there with your 3/4 drive air impact wrench 'till you managed to short something.

The simple answer, is, you can't do anything to fix it.