How to open a LaCie Desktop Hard Disk

The LaCie Desktop Hard Disks are ordinary SATA hard drives sold in external USB (2.0) enclosures. This particular product family includes at least the following model designations with the following capacities:

• 320GB LaCie DESKTOP HARD DISK USB 2.0 7200RPM 8MB (Product code: 301284E)
• 500GB LaCie DESKTOP HARD DISK USB 2.0 7200RPM 8MB (Product code: 301285E)

For some reason, devices of this type – i.e. external USB enclosures that come pre-equipped with a drive as opposed to similar enclosures that are sold without one – are not normally intended to be opened or “serviced” by the end user, at least if they come from LaCie. (Why? I blame throw-away culture: the manufacturer is more interested in selling you yet another HDD in yet another USB enclosure than making the product more versatile or easily upgradable.)

Consequently, the user manual does not give any instructions on opening the case, much less replacing the hard disk drive inside it. However, there are a number of good reasons why you might want to do precisely those things:

• in order to remove the HDD from the case and install it into an internal drive bay of your PC (this could come handy if you no longer need the portability of an external enclosure and would like to get rid of the unnecessary case, cabling, and a separate wall wart, or if you just want to get the full SATA throughput instead of mere USB 2.0 speeds),
• in order to replace a broken HDD with a new one,
• in order to recover the data (and the drive) if the USB controller has broke down but the HDD itself is still working,
• or in order to upgrade the original HDD with a new one that has a larger capacity.

Let’s get started

1. This is where we will begin:

   

2. Turn the HDD upside down. Look at the bottom and locate two little slots right next to the back panel:

   

3. Both slots contain a plastic locking tab. These two tabs hold the back panel in place. In order to unlock the panel, insert two small, flat-headed tools (screwdrivers, nailfiles, etc.) into the slots and tilt both tools gently towards the front panel so that their tips – which are now out of the view, inside the slots – will bend the hidden plastic tabs inside the enclosure towards the back panel. Keep applying a gentle force to the tools and slide the back panel simultaneously upwards a bit until the locking tabs can no longer make a contact with whatever it is they’re normally locking onto:

   

4. Now you can remove the tools and slide the back panel all the way up...

   
5. ...and take it off.

   

6. Next, slide the plastic drive cradle out of the metal top casing:

   

7. The same thing as in the above, but viewed from the top:

   

8. You’re done now. The case seems to contain a 3.5″ Samsung SATA drive (well, at least mine did!) and a small circuit board that acts as a USB-SATA interface. The drive is attached to the cradle with four Philips screws – two on each side.