Removing hard drive or replacing any hardware part in computers, especially laptops, requires some level of technical skills and should be done by authorized personnel only to avoid any damage. This statement stands more valid in case of laptops, as it contains much smaller & fragile components. Removal of the hard drive from a laptop is usually done to upgrade the storage with more space, increase the data read-write speed using faster SSD, or replace the damaged or failed hard drive with a new one.
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Removing a hard drive is not an arduous task as long as you are careful while dismantling the hard drive from your laptop. However, taking off the laptop’s hard drive without prior experience and without knowing the consequences, which may arise during or after removal of the hard drive from a laptop, is definitely not a good idea. Therefore, read this blog before you go ahead and start unscrewing your laptop.
One should not remove the hard disk drive from a laptop without proper tools and equipment that are required to perform any operation on the hardware part of the laptop. These tools are usually not available to home users. Therefore, chances of damage to the laptop and hard drive are too high. Once the hard drive is damaged, data stored on it can be permanently lost.
Other than the above mentioned, following are some more reasons as to why hard disk removal from a laptop by an unauthorized person is not safe.
1. Laptops are Compact Machines
Replacing the hard disk from a laptop is much more difficult than a desktop, as a laptop is more compact and densely packed. Also, these parts are fragile and even a bit more of excess force can damage the hard disk connector or any other part of the laptop. Therefore, it requires precaution and patience.
For a proper guide on removing the hard drive from the laptop, you should contact your laptop manufacturer.
2. Voids Warranty
Disassembling your own laptop voids the manufacturer warranty in most cases. However, there are some exceptions to certain laptop models by the manufacturer. Therefore, check with your manufacturer before disassembling your laptop. They might also assist you in upgrading or replacing the laptop hard drive.
3. Static Charge
You should never remove a hard drive that is working normally. However, if you decide to proceed, make sure to touch a grounded metal object before touching your laptop’s internal parts with your bare hands. This helps avoid transmission of static charge to the fragile electronic components of your laptop including the hard drive. The static charge, if transmitted, can harm your laptop’s motherboard or damage the hard drive, thereby resulting in a permanent data loss scenario.
4. Removing Hard drive Makes Laptop Useless
The hard drive contains all the OS files that are required to run/operate a laptop. Removing the hard drive from a laptop without replacing it can make your laptop useless. This doesn’t actually damage the laptop in any way but does make it inoperable.
However, removal of a failed, corrupt, or inaccessible hard disk drive from the laptop is an absolute necessity, as it makes the laptop function again. Although such hard drives can be repaired by formatting, it erases all the stored data. Therefore it’s important to first recover the data from the hard drive before fixing it.
Data can be recovered from a logically failed, corrupt, and inaccessible hard drive with the help of a reliable data recovery software such as Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows. The tool uses ‘Deep Scan’ that searches for the files based on file signatures and helps in precise data recovery from such hard drives.
You can choose to remove the hard drive from the laptop and use a SATA to USB converter cable or enclosure to connect the drive with another working Windows PC. Then after installing Stellar Data Recovery Professional, you can proceed with the data recovery process.
Additionally, you can choose to recover data from deleted partitions, which might have been deleted due to hard disk failure. After a successful recovery, you can format the faulty hard drive and then move the recovered data to it.
Removal of the hard drive from a laptop is safe only if you have proper knowledge, tools, and equipment; otherwise, it can lead to a data loss scenario due to hard drive failure or cause permanent damage to your laptop’s motherboard.
Therefore, it’s important to be very careful while getting inside your laptop’s hardware to replace, remove, or upgrade it. However, the world’s best data recovery software i.e. Stellar Data Recovery Professional is here to rescue your data from any corrupt, inaccessible, formatted, or deleted/lost hard drive.
Satyeshu is a Windows blogger and data recovery expert. He is having good technical knowledge and experience in Windows data recovery. He writes about latest technical tips, Windows issues and tutorials.
I really thanks for the advice. It really makes life of hard drive better.
Hello Sheldon,
Please check our other information blogs also.
The facilitates for creating a working copy of your hard drive by ‘Create Image’ is really notable when the original hard drive is taking long time to scan or having so many bad sectors.
Hey Lorenzo,
We feel glad that you like the software feature. It is really helpful in case of dying hard drive.
I dropped my laptop some time back and to make sure that the the hard drive is not broken I removed the Hard drive of the laptop.But unfortunately there is a small crack in the hard drive.Is it still possible to recover lost data with the software?
We recommend not to use the drive further if it is physically damaged. There are high chances that the platter or disc gets severely damaged making it non detectable in the system.
We suggest to avail the data recovery services for the failing hard drive
Thanks for really informative blog to increase the life-span of my Seagate hard drive. I have seen people dismantle quiet frequently and thus invite data loss horrible situations. Please keep writing more such stuffs.
Thanks for your motivational words.