This is a guide to opening the Maxtor One Touch 4 500GB External Hard drive By James M Seddon, CCNA Introduction The first step before opening this rather expensive drive is to first ensure that there is no other way to get it working. Trying the Seagate Maxtor help pages and forums is a brilliant source for finding tips and tricks to try and solve any problems.

This solution is good for drives that have partition problems that cannot be fixed through USB methods and drives that no longer respond to computer connections.

The problem I had with my drive is that computer systems could no longer acknowledge it once it was attached; this was on both Windows Vista Ultimate 32 Bit and 64 Bit editions and also a Windows XP Professional machine. All produced the same error, or rather the lack of any indications at all.

So rather than pay in excess of $3000 to have the data recovered and a new drive sent to me, I opted to just void the warranty instead (do not do this if you do not have any sensitive, private or important data on it, take it back to the store and get a refund and buy a new hard drive from a different manufacturer).

So here we go, time to get down to business. Just to point out, because I run a business and store vital data on this drive I had to remove it and place into a network server before I got chance to take these pictures so there are a few differences to what you will see when you open your drive, but these are just things such as a few

screws (pointed out in pictures) and some rubber noise dampeners on the drive cage.

Getting down to business So you now have your broken hard drive in front of you.

First of all, flip it onto its side so you can see the base of the caddy.

Undo the circled screw, to do this just get your screwdriver/knife and scrape away the warranty sticker covering it and unscrew it. Doing this allows the caddy to be pulled apart.

Youre going to need a strong set of hands to do this part. Before you do this, I warn you that I cut myself doing this, so some caution is advisable.

Grip the caddy as show in the picture, and briskly pull the caddy outwards. It is held together by tension clips, which are designed to give way when force is applied, so dont be afraid of breaking the caddy because it is very unlikely.

Oh yes, before I forget, the metal drive cage inside the caddy is not bolted in, so be careful not to completely rip the caddy in two as the

actual hard drive is likely to go for flying lessons and end up completely useless.

So now that we have gained access to the inside, you will have something similar to this.

Where the red circles are, there were some rubber noise dampeners, these simply pull off to reveal two big silver screws. Remove these too. The blue dots indicate were the blue screws where. There is exactly the same on the opposite side. Again remove the rubber dampeners and screws.

The metal caddy simply lifts out.

Now you have this.

Now there are 6 (SIX) screws to remove for this metal caddy in order to gain access to the hard drive held inside. A small Phillips screw driver is required to open these (surprised me, these are usually torques screws and a bugger to open).

These pictures show the locations of these screws. Sorry for the poor lighting, the flash on my phone just makes everything go to shiny to see.

Okay so we now have access to the metal drive cage. First of all we must remove the side panel.

Grip the panel in place where my fingers are and lift. Some light resistance may be met, but it is just catching against the black rubber dampener and is not attached to anything so dont worry about damaging any electrical components.

Now that is gone, we must now detach the electrical circuit tray. Dont worry; this is extremely easy (again to my surprise). At the front of the drive tray is the white LED and activation circuitry. You have to lift this up so the next part can be removed as it catches the drive cage. Just place it like it is in the picture.

Now the part that is shown in this picture is attached to the hard drive. Dont worry, simply rocking this piece from side to side whilst applying an upwards force will remove it.

Once this is removed the hard drive will simply fall out of the caddy. It is a Seagate Barracuda 7200RPM 500GB SATA Hard Drive, and is fully compatible with most modern computers. As I stated in the beginning, I installed this into a server and it worked instantly, as a matter of fact the computer even recognised it as the same drive as it used to be and even started the software.

Go to: http://www.easeus.com/resource/install-sata-hard-drive.htm

Thank you for reading and I hope that this guide helped you solve your problems. Feel free to contact me via email for more help.

James M Seddon, CCNA

Snedie69er@hotmail.co.uk