Blog of Travis Hydzik

The real questions are: Did you have any problem hooking the drive up as an internal drive and also, is it an SATA drive? Finally, did it format correctly. I just bought two for $65 each and want to use them in my computer as a mirroring raid setup.

That’s what I figured. I just got one taken apart and it is a standard ST3750640AS just like yours. Thanks for the directions. I had a tough time with the clips, but didn’t break them, so I guess I could put another drive in and use it. Where else do you get a 750 GB drive for $65. I’ll take the other apart tomorrow and initialize my array and get the copying done, free up the drives that are in use and get it all back together. Quick answer, by the way. Thanks again. I am constantly amazed by the resource the web is. By the way, I called Seagate today and the agent hemmed and hawed and said that it was an SATA drive inside but that the firmware was different and that the warranty would be void. I don’t even actually know if that is true because the label is standard, but they might have the serial number tracked that way.

Good luck getting one of these apart. This guy must be a sadist because i spent over an hour trying to fish these tiny little clips off.

This method does not work. The pictures are horrible also. He says push the clips, but doesnt say to lift them off, push them away from the screwdriver, or what. even after totally removing the metal covers on this case and being able to see the assembly, the clips just wont come off while trying to separate the case.

Do yourself a favor and just rip the damn case apart. Its not worth the time or trouble to try to delicately remove the case from this drive.

Thanks so much for the pictures of the inside. Unfortunately I found this after I had already done quite a bit of scratch damage to the case, but I actually have another one that I will try this method on. Got each of mine for $54 on clearance at Best Buy.

Your story isn’t entirely true. I bought a Maxtor external RAID box a few months back, it came with two 500GB hard drives, GBit Nic, USB, blah blah… Recently one of the hard drives was causing problems so I removed the covers and found it had two Seagate 500GB SATA 7200.10 hard drives, looked at the stickers and both are the octangal ones you claim are counterfit drives, yes the warranty it unknown but after talking to Seagate they do this intially when they sell products with their hard drives built inside.

So to claim the difference in the stickers on the drives determines whether its a conterfit or not is completely untrue.

A.

Do you also have the problem to transfer files from another external to the 750GB? My computer won’t detect both at the same time. But if it does, then I won’t be able to transfer files from the old external to the Seagate…

Those problematic tabs are problematic on my new 1tb FAP because they are HUGE…the tab is very deep. Anyways, I disassembled the whole thing and found a nice OEM drive inside… that means I have to put them back if i need to warranty them. sadface.

Need help on how to dismantle a seagate freeagent desk.
disassemble a “seagate freeagent desk” anyone?
does anyone know how to take apart a seagate freeagent desk. – that is a statement. and hopefully is google searchable.

I’ve found that the most effective way of opening this drive was to rip it apart. Thanks for the help though!

Pliers, Huge screwdriver and a serious side cutter, thats all you really need.

I’m sure the guy who designed this chassis used to be a tank technician who… Just spent an hour ripping it apart, I really didnt know you could get screws that small in that tight…. Anyway, there is no chance of me using the case again, its off to the dump.

how to find serial n umber on seagate freeagent pro..
exactly the same one as showin in the abv picture.
can any one help me

This is great and brilliant article. You have save my life :) Very very thanks for help with this disassembling manual.

Andrzej [PL]

An update:

Seagate’s recovery guys called and told me that, depending on how much of the 465 GB I had saved to that drive that I want to keep, recovery would run anywhere from $500-2000. Had the guy not been so incredibly nice while giving me the bad news, I would have told him to pi$$ up a rope.

He advised that since I seemed to have a pretty solid grasp on tech, I should just bite the bullet, void the warranty, and drop the disk into a new enclosure. On the plus side, he gave me hus number and told me if I ran into any problems performing that surgery, he would be glad to walk me through it.

So… Mixed bag.

The Seagate Freeagent Desk is a replacement for the original Seagate Freeagent. The original Seagate Freeagent had several hardware defects – it was a very very poorly made product (though the Seagate software is good).

The 2 main defects of the original Seagate Freeagent were:

1. The front panel light sometimes drew too much power, causing the drive motor to sputter.

2. The small USB connector on the back was flimsy, not braced and was known to break-off. This was a BIG problem, because losing 500GB to 1TB of data because of a flimsy connector was a big scare.

The solution for owners of the original Seagate Freeagent is to extract the SATA drive from it and stick it in a Seagate Freeagent Desk. This is what I did (perhaps there was an easier way).

As another poster said use a butter knife to pry open the lid, starting in front (on top) by the Seagate Logo. Work your way around and it will open. Take off the lid, unscrew everything. Remove the metal shielding and remove the SATA drive. The new light is an LED light which will NOT unscrew or unplug – so leave the light.

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Thanks for the great information and follow-up notes

Wow…

Now that I have ripped this thing apart, I am saddened by the fact that I just destroyed the most impressive piece of modern computer hardware I’ve seen. They just don’t make things like this anymore!

Seriously, a metal cage around the HDD, mounted with 4 steel screws, suspended by rubber caps, wrapped in a plastic cover secured with inpenetrable metal clips, with everything wrapped in a sheet of alumunum and balanced on a pedestal that was secured with like 84 screws hidden beneath rubber caps.

Phew…well, it’s in the trash now.

Oops, mycoldfusion@yahoo.com

I don’t know what it is about these clips but they just wouldn’t come out for me. I must have spent at least two hours pushing at them. I started by trying to be gentle like in the instructions, but that got me nowhere. I ended up getting the clips out using an extreme amount of force and two hours of effort.

Part of the problem was that I wasn’t sure I was pushing in the right place or what the pushing was supposed to accomplish, so let me diagram it:

|c|x|
_|c|_|
|b|c /wwwwwwwww
|b|/
|b|______________

That’s a side-view of the clip (the parts filled with the letter ‘c’), plastic it hooks on to (filled with ‘x’) and the wire (‘w’) used to push at the clip.
Yes, there is a piece of plastic coming up from the bottom of the case _behind_ the clip (‘b’) which makes it even harder to push back far enough that it can lift up past the edge it’s hooked on. I have a feeling that if you try to pry open the case at all, it only serves to compress the lip of the clip and make it even harder to push it back far enough, so don’t pry at the case. Instead, I think it’s best to try to use your wire to push the clip back and upwards.
It’s very hard to get enough light and the wire in and see around the wire to see where to position it, but here’s a diagram of what you’ll see on the right side:

|r|xx|r| |r|
|r|xx|r| |r|
|r|—|r| /
|r|cc|r|
|r|—|/
|r|b /
|r| /

The vertical sections filled with ‘r’ are raised bars of plastic that are not movable and are connected to the bottom of the case. Sunk between the bars (and connected to them) is plastic that the clip hooks on to (‘x’), and below that is the head of the clip (‘c’) that you want to push back and up. You can actually see it move back a little when you push it. Be very careful not to push on ‘x’ because that may deform it enough that you can’t get the clip past, although the plastic there is strong so I think it would take a lot of force. There’s an open area beneath the clip (‘b’) which looks empty, but if you push the wire in there you’ll hit the plastic behind the clip. It shouldn’t hurt if you push there, but it won’t help either.

So my advice is to push in and up at that clip with as much force as you can apply until the case starts to open. Since I wasn’t really sure if I was pushing in the correct place or what the pushing was supposed to accomplish, I ended up prying the case open from the sides and using an extreme amount of force to force the clip out, but I ended up with a lot of bent plastic, bent metal, and I’m surprised nothing was broken.

Also, as one poster alluded to, there’s an inner shell of plastic (that the clips are part of) with an outer shell of aluminum simply glued to it. Part of the aluminum shell started to unglue from the plastic as I was going through the process, and I could have pried the aluminum completely free of the plastic which gives you a good view of the clips and what you’re doing. The only problem is this puts a lot of strain on the clips and no doubt makes them even more impossible to get out, so try pushing hard in and up with a wire or similar before you resort to tearing off the metal.

One commenter said the clips were metal and one said they were tiny… they are neither. They’re plastic and thick and rather large and stupidly strong. After getting fed up with the final clip that just would not release I tried drilling off its head, hoping to break off the head or at least weaken it. All that ended up doing was putting a hole in the head and it still took extreme force to release. The raised ‘r’ bars of plastic mean you can’t see the full width of the head, so you can’t drill or cut it fully.

Also, as others have mentioned, the two bottom clips release by just pulling them without too much force. I had both of them released before I could get the final top clip to let go.