How to Swap Hard Disk Drive Platters

A hard disk drive platter is a flat disk made of cobalt-based metal alloy and coated with a thin film of magnetized material. The platter is where electronic data is magnetically stored for retrieval and use by your computer system. If the platter gets damaged and you want to try to repair it yourself, you'll need to swap out the platter for one that is intact.

Things You'll Need

• Phillips head screwdriver
• Thin latex gloves, powder free
• Anti-static wrist strap (optional)
• New hard disk drive

Instructions

1. Buy a new hard drive that's the same model as the platter you are swapping out of the existing computer hard drive.

2. Set up an area to work in that is as clean as you can make it. Dust, vacuum and turn off your air conditioning or heat and the fan so that no air circulates while you swap out the platters.

3. Put on latex gloves and an anti-static wrist strap.

4. Remove the PC's outer cover so the internal components, including the hard drive, are exposed.

5. Touch an unpainted portion of the computer's casing if you don't have an anti-static wrist strap. This grounds you against electric shock from any stray static electricity.

6. Remove the hard drive from the PC. Unscrew and remove the hard drive cover.

7. Look closely at the hard drive platters before going any further. If there is visible warping, scorching, scoring or any other visible damage, then swapping out the old platter for a new one won't do you any good because a new platter will just be damaged the same way by whatever damaged the existing platter.

8. Unscrew and remove the cover from the new hard drive.

9. Extract the platters from the new drive.

10. Extract the platters from the old, existing drive.

11. Place the old platters into the new drive and reassemble.

12. Install the new hard drive into your PC.

13. Copy data from the old platters as soon as possible. There is no guarantee how long the old platters will be viable.

14. Remove the hard drive and get rid of it. It will fail pretty quickly after you finish the procedure. Hopefully you've bought yourself enough time to get your data off the old platters so you won't need them anymore anyway.

Tips & Warnings

• Taking your hard disk drive apart to this extent and removing the platter will void any warranty you have left on your system or your hard drive components.