Neil, this Tricky Little B…oy!

For some time now I was searching for documentation on the internet about how to open my LaCie “Neil Poulton Design” hard drive, but I could not find anything. As it seems, this drive will be bought only by Apple users with probably two left hands and too much money for constantly spending it on a new one, when TimeMachine strewn it with its backups. Today then I thought, “Eh, come on, I finally want to have this thing open!” – and so I did.

First of all, let’s have a look at the drive itself. It’s plain. Really plain. No holes, no screws, nothing. How the f*ck shall we open this thing. Let’s take a look under its gum-feet. Nah, not even there. What he hack? So, as it seems, this drive can’t be opened. Wrong! Yes we can!

What do we need therefor?

A cloth, for not scratching the gloss

A strong thread

A modified paperclip

Okay, now we’re all set up. First of all, take the hard drive and turn it upside-down. Place it on the cloth to not scratch its lickable, glossy exterior.

Place it on the cloth

Next, take the thread and try to run it through the holes on the case’s bottom, so that you have something to pull the hard disk out of the case. Now try to bend the sides of the plastic-case out carefully and pull drive out piece for piece. You could also use some credit card or other thin piece of plastic (not metal, it will kill the plastic-borders!) for doing this. Warning, this could cause serious damage to your credit card!

Do the credit card-thing on the front-side, the left- and right-side. When pulled it out some millimeters on each of those side, take all the pieces of your thread and try to pull out the drive to the back (e.g. rotation of 90 degrees around the drive’s back-side). On the back, there’s the button for turning it on and off, so you won’t be able to pull it out vertically. If you’ve successfully managed to pull out the drive, the whole scenario should look similar to this:

Pulled out the drive

Now, you can see the actual hard drive which is mounted to the bottom-part of the whole case. After inspecting the construction you can see that there were to glueing-points or any hooks we broke while opening the drive. This means, that if you’ve done it right, you won’t see that anything ever changed on that drive.

Now, I can finally get myself a 750GB (or even 1TB?) hard-drive and build that in. :-)

Happy trying!

//btw: As you notice, LaCie builds in Hitachi Deskstars on these drives. These drives cost something around 50 bucks nowadays. The complete case is around 90 bucks.

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You’re currently reading “Neil, this Tricky Little B…oy!”

Published:: 5.9.09 / 5pm

Category:: Hot Gear, Life itself, Mac and stuff ..., New & Cool, Tutorials

Tags:: Deskstar, Do-It-Yourself, Hard Drive, Hitachi, HowTo, LaCie, Neil Poulton, Open, Tutorial

Read it:: On your mobile device.

Marcel P. 5.9.09 / 6pm

Dude, you finally did it! I like that thread-solution :)
Good job!

Marius M. 5.9.09 / 8pm

Heh, yeah, thanks. I have been really upset by the fact that a piece of hardware should win against me and my friend “raw aggression”. *g*

aki 6.13.09 / 6pm

Thanks! I’ve been looking for this info for soo long…

Warren B. 6.24.09 / 8pm

Well done. I’ve been looking for information on how to do this.
Bye the bye, does LaCie what ATA interface drive does LaCie use in the case, parallel or serial? I’d like to pull my drive out and use it in my CPU on a parallel IDE controller.

Marius M. 6.24.09 / 9pm

Hi Warren,

mine used a S-ATA (2) drive inside and I don’t know of any models using ATA/ATAPI/PATA. :-)

Bye.

Tracy 7.17.09 / 11am

Once removed, is it possible to simply press the thing back in?

Also, my Lacie is 1TB and states SATA- do I assume that it’s merely a matter of unplugging the connector inside to extract the drive- and that it’s a standard SATA which I can drop into my tower?

Hope this doesn’t sound stupid- I just run across so many proprietary, altered bits and pieces that I don’t want to open it for nothing.

The main reason I bought it was for a backup- but then realized how slow the transfer rate really was as USB (mine is USB only). So, I thought it might be better to put this one into my tower and swap one of my smaller drives into the case to use for backups.

Thanks for the walkthrough and solution on opening this thing,

Marius M. 7.18.09 / 4pm

Hi Tracy,

yepp, right. It’s a standard drive, nothing special, just the fact that it’s a (crappy) Hitachi Deskstar (at least here) which makes pretty much noise.

I did not had any problems to re-mount the case again – as I said, you just need to pay attention when taking it off. Don’t stretch the sides to hard or even try to force things. It should slide pretty simple out when you have each side un-sticked. :-)

Bye!

Angela 7.21.09 / 6am

Thank for so much for the information!!!

Do you happen to know if there is a security seal in this drive? Mine stopped working after a month so I want to open it for insepction, but worried that might void the warranty. Lacie referred me to their approved data recovery place which gave me a quote of $500 – $2700 which is way over my budget, so I want to have my tech friend try retrieving the data… But in order to send it back to Lacie for a replacement afterward, I need to make sure I don’t break any security seal of any kind…

Thanks for your help!

- Angela

Marius M. 7.21.09 / 8am

Hi Angela,

I didn’t notice of any security seal – or let’s say it like that: After I opened it, there wasn’t any piece of plastic (or else) that just fell out of the box. :-)

Though, I’m not sure whether you can really open up the drive without LaCie noticing this. As I said, the main problem is the drive’s plastic case. It’s made of this very ugly and “stretchy” plastic, which tends to keep it’s bended form when opening too rough.

However, as far as I’ve seen, you only need to pay attention to the little blue light on the bottom, since it seems to tend to break apart pretty easy. It’s only fixed by some glue. :-)

Though, I would not suggest trying to open the drive, if you really think of sending it back to LaCie. I’m not sure, how good your buddy is at recovering data, but in most situations either you just deleted the file-system information on it, so you could plug it into your computer and recover those using utilities like “photorec” or your drive totally stopped working (e.g. the disks inside don’t spin anymore) and then it’s getting pretty hard (impossible for a private person without the right set of tools) to get the data off it.

Bye! :-)

Angela 7.21.09 / 9am

Thanks for the advice, Marius. My drive would spin up after I turn it on, for 10 seconds or so, then I would hear a “click” and it will stop spinning, while the blue light is still on… My buddy thinks it’s the enclosure that’s the problem so he thinks taking the HD out and plugging it into a desktop will do the trick. What do you think??

Marius M. 7.21.09 / 1pm

I’m not sure, whether the enclosure could be the reason for this. For sure, the USB-Controller could be damaged or something, but as I understood you, the drive spins up, clicks and then spins down again. Does it do it even, if the drive is not connected? Because if so, I doubt that it’s really the enclosure. An external drive usually spins even if nothing is connected but power.

I might be the power-unit from within the enclosure, but even this would be odd. If the power-unit is broken, the hard drive wouldn’t spin up anymore and you wouldn’t see any blue light, I guess.

I would guess that it’s pretty sure something wrong with the drive itself. Depending on how much you “love the fear” you can open the case and try the drive within some other enclosure or you just send it in to LaCie and get it repaired.

Angela 7.21.09 / 6pm

Hi Marius,

That’s right, my drive does this spin-up-click-spin-down thing regardless if it’s connected to a computer or not. So I guess the possibility of the drive being the issue is pretty high… the only reason I would take the risk of opening it is because LaCie would erase all data from the drive as soon as I send it in, and I really want to be able to recover some data from the drive before that happens (and wishing not to have to pay the $500-$2700)…

Sigh, tough luck tough luck… =(

Thank you so much for your help, though. You have been so helpful and I really appreciate it!

Tyler 8.25.09 / 12am

Hey marius. ur info has helped quite a bit but im having trouble..how do i thread this thread intrough the holes?
i have the 1TB LaCie neil poulton drive identical to yours asnd it accidentally fell about a 1 foot drop from my cofee table and its makin the weird click and scrappy noise but the lights on and the drive stays on. =\ i wish to open the HDD and correct the proble but the friggin’ thread XD.

Tyler 8.25.09 / 1am

never mind lol i got it out of the case..thank you very much marius!

Joseph 9.14.09 / 9pm

I had quite a bit of trouble getting into mine, so I began slipping in thin plates of clear plastic (sliced off candy containers) into the sides. There are three on each side, and one in front of the light slot.
After a bit of tugging (Using a very strong rope), I finally got it out. Mounted it, and…
Dead hard drive.
Just send it back to LaCie and get a refund or whatnot. You void the warranty by removing the drive.
These Hitachi hard drives are cheap and flimsy. Normally I would advise you to manually upgrade the hard drive, but the case is so terrible that I wouldn’t bother trying.

Cain 9.14.09 / 10pm

I have a problem with my Lacie. It will not power up at all. I have tested it with an identical power supply with the same issue. I am positive that it is the power unit inside the case that is the problem. I have spoken to Lacie but they said if I want to send it back to them for repairs, they will wipe the hard disk for tests regardless of whether there is anything wrong with it or not. I am sure the hard disk inside is in perfect working order.

Does anyone know where I can get a replacement Neil Poulton case or replace the power unit in the casing? I’m based in London.

Thanks
Cain

Marius M. 9.14.09 / 11pm

Hello Cain,

I’m afraid but I don’t think you will be able to find a “replacement case”. As far as I’ve known, the cases are only being sold containing a drive – else anybody could just buy a case and insert a drive of his choice.

Here again, it depends on what’s more important to you – your data, or your warranty. If you say, you don’t care about the warranty just gently try to open the case the way I’ve described it. If you achieve to take out the hard-drive you can test it within some other case or computer to see if it’s still alive. If not, you could try putting it back and still send the whole case (put together again) to LaCie and ask for a replacement. I’m not sure, if they could find out that the case was opened before – as I’ve already written, I couldn’t find any label or else I broke while opening my LaCie.

It’s up to you. :-)

Cain 9.14.09 / 11pm

Thanks Marius,

I am positive it’s just the power board inside the enclosure. I have dismantled the hard drive (following your instructions) and will try the HDD with another casing. I also have the part which I will take into an electronics store and see if they can order something similar so I can rebuild the Lacie casing. Lacie tech support are pretty damn unhelpful. I might just put it into a different casing altogether.

Thanks again
Cain

Katie 9.16.09 / 1am

Hey there,

I have this drive, just bought it about 3 weeks ago from a Future Shop in Toronto. Unfortunately a couple days ago it fell about 2 feet onto carpet and now does the dreaded clicking and is no longer recognized. I’ve had this problem before with a portable LaCie that was dropped, and I just opened it up to discover the drive had become dislodged from the power source, but there was no clicking.

I’m sure that Future Shop will not be able to recover my data if I return it (30 day guarantee Ha ha!), and the LaCie tech support had nothing to say that I couldn`t find on the FAQ. Do you think it`s worth it for me to open it and attempt an amateur repair? Could it be that badly damaged from the short fall? What should I look for once I’m in there?

Marius M. 9.16.09 / 10am

Hello Katie,

for sure, the Shop won’t be able to recover your data, if the drive should be broken internally but – depending on the law in Canada and what you tell the support how it happened – they should replace you the broken drive with a new one, as long as you did not void the warranty. By opening the LaCie and trying to repair it yourself, you are voiding the warranty and might lose support for the drive.

Now it depends on how important the data is for you. If you still have another copy of the data on that drive, I would not risk it to try to fix it myself – because in most cases you won’t be able to do that with hard-drives anyway. If something internally is broken, you have no chance.

I’m not sure about the clicking, but for me this doesn’t sound like just a cable that got disconnected. The power cable seems to still be connected, because it clicks, and if the data cable is not connected, the drive should still spin up (at least once). Besides, from what I’ve seen on mine, there would be no chance I could think of, in which the power-cable disconnects from only one side and could make the drive “click” because of that (e.g. electrical flow that stops sometimes because of the loose cable).

Greets.

Judd 10.9.09 / 4am

Hi,

Thanks for a great how to on openning the dreaded box.

The 1TB Seagate which came from Lacie has failed. Just wondering if anyone has tried replacing with a larger drive or if I should just put in another 1TB.

Marius M. 10.9.09 / 8am

Hi Judd,

I didn’t try to replace my 500GB Hitachi yet, but I’ve already opened up the case because I thought it wouldn’t take that long anymore until I would need to exchange it.

However, I don’t see any problems in exchanging the drive with a bigger one, as long as it’s the same attachment-technology (SATA in this case). :-)

You could just open the LaCie, exchange the drive and test it while it’s still open. If it should not work (what would really surprise me) you can still exchange it with another one.

Enjoy!

Jochem O 10.16.09 / 3pm

Hi!

Thanks for this nice (and funny) workaround.
Since you replaced the HD, how did you get de new HD to work? I tried unpacking the 20080118.tar.gz file wich is on the installation cd but nothing happens…
Any clues?

Groetsels!

Marius M. 10.16.09 / 4pm

Hi Jochem,

as I’ve said before, my LaCie lies half-opened on my desk since I wrote this post. Then ago I had 40GB left on the disk and thought “eh, it’ll be full within one month” – “unfortunately” it’s not like that, so I did not yet exchange the drive through another one.

However, usually it’s just the regular way it goes: You plug out the old drive, unmount it, mount the new drive and plug it back in. Then turn on your LaCie and the drive should spin up. Am I misunderstanding your question?

Best regards!

Jochem O 10.18.09 / 1pm

Thanks for the quick reply.

I wish it was that easy :p Unfortunately, just mounting a new drive and let the Lacie do the configuration doens’t work. I mounted the Lacie disk in another casing and connected it with usb on my computer but nothing shows up on “my computer. With “IFS drives control panel” i was able to mount al the 6 linux partitions. Yes, 6 :p But windows doesn’t let me see the content of 5 drives. I tried to just copy al the files from the only partition i can see to the new disk, but then i get the message “cannot copy file because you don’t have the rights to doe this”

I searched for a solution for half a day but couldn’t find anything usefull so I decieded to return the Lacie to the shop and buy an easy networkdisk casing.

Marius M. 10.18.09 / 1pm

that sounds really weird. I can’t imagine LaCie really being that stupid to limit the drive’s access to their very single case. As I said, I can’t test it yet, but as soon as I got a replacement drive I’ll comment my experiences here. :-)

However, thank you for that information. If you should find out anything further, feel free to append it here. :-)

Josh 11.6.09 / 9pm

This is great thanks. My 3 month old drive had same problem as Angela’s.

I got authorization from the Lacie support guy to “open case” and not violate warranty assuming I don’t dreak it while doing so.

I am going to try and read data before I mail unit back to LaCie for repair. Wish me luck.

I will let everyone know if the authorization was worth anything.

Josh

Marius M. 11.8.09 / 9pm

Hi Josh,

cool, please keep us informed about your problem and how LaCie reacted on your “warranty break”, after you mailed the drive back to the. :-)

Ericco Bazzo 11.12.09 / 6pm

Nice! it took me 30 seconds what at first was impossible! cheers!!!

Hayllander 12.13.09 / 12am

Hy,

Congratulations for the post. It was of great help.

I got to open my case of LACIE of 1TB serial it ties
and I changed 1 TB for 1.5 TB

thank’s

the lucky beaver 12.20.09 / 1pm

YOU ARE A GENIUS !!!
the idea to open with a credit card is marvelous, it’s working also with others models

Treehousedaddy 1.4.10 / 9pm

Thanks for the tips on getting into the drive.
There is an easier way though, using a thin but stiff piece of metal around 3.5 inches long, The case has three narrow lugs about 4mm from the rim, in the middle and near each end. All you have to do is disengage them from holes in the chassis and get the chassis out a couple of mm.
I used the ‘L’-shaped bracket that was fixing an old drive to its chassis and had the case open in seconds.

3xBTW: 1) there is a seal inside, covering one of the chassis mounting screws. Break it and you void your warranty. 2) The 1TB now comes with a Seagate Barracuda LP 3) the connections on my USB2.0 model are miniaturized so I wasn’t able to mount the drive in an old chassis after all.

After that setback just wondering if it’s worth the risk to move this drive into one of my other two that I only use for Time Machine backups. The faulty one has been provided for a film edit but dismounts itself after a few minutes, so even copying off to another drive is proving impossible.

Treehousedaddy 1.5.10 / 5pm

Further to my posting last night, an interesting observation. I’ve been running the drive open for the last sixteen hours, without the metal guard that covers the electronics or the case and it’s been running faultlessly, copying off large video files. That suggests there is a design fault causing something to short when assembled. NB Try at your own risk! NB2. Come on LaCie!

Fruitbat 1.13.10 / 9pm

Just an obervation (probably already covered) but there appears to have been a design change. I have a 500GB that was purchased in Nov of 09, and the case design is different.

Instead of having 2 “nubs” on each side, and 2 on the front, it has 3 nubs on each side. The removal process is similar, but the location of the 3 nubs makes it feel a lot more like you’re going to break your case. They’re located at the center, and about 1cm (1/2 inch) from each end. Again, there are NO clips or nubs at either end in this design. Externally it looks identical to the pictures provided in this guide.

Nadia 1.29.10 / 12am

Yeah me and my friend ended up using a total of about 6 different cards to get this bad boy opened, lol….
two for the left and right side, one up top and one for the bottom and it slid right out! Thanks for this demonstration!!!

Nadia 1.29.10 / 1am

A question that I do have is whether it is possible to replace a reader on the the hard drive?

Marius

Neil, this Tricky Little B…oy!

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