The Seagate U Series 5 ST340823A (40M) had a look unlike any other hard drive. It had a rubber case that slipped over the drive, almost like a car bra. It also had a strong silver tape over the gap between the top and bottom. These came out when Seagate acquired Conner, so a lot of strange models came out.
After taking out all the screws that held the cover on and taking out the platters, I cut the ‘bra’ on one side. Then I cut the tape on all but one side (the tape makes a decent hinge) then glued the ‘bra’ back on.
The case is big enough to hold Post-it® notes from the grabby co-workers I used to have.
The day has come when I’m getting bad SSDs and I wondered if I could do the same thing. First off, the screws are a secure Torx 6. Most sets of secure bits go down to T7, so I had to order a special bit.
The first time I used a Dremel-like tool to cut the connector from the rest of the board. The second time I found that a good pair of Fiskars scissors works even better. And it’s not too hard to glue the connector to the case.
The problem I had was how to keep the case closed. Velcro was a fail. Bev, the kindly gray-haired library specialist, had some office magnets that she had no use for and offered them to me. I had them sitting around for a while before I went back to the SSD project to try them. The magnets were 2mm x 1mm. In the four corners, I glued a stack of two to one side and one on the other. It works well.
They drives are a little small to hold a credit card, but are still useful.
When I die, who knows what’s hidden in my stuff. Please try to open everything. You might get something valuable.