One weekend, I was given an old MacBook Pro and an external hard drive that were supposed to get destroyed for data security reasons. I took this opportunity to not just make sure that the data is unrecoverable, but to look closer at the hardware. I could see and measure how components are put together and I was impressed by not only the engineering of the parts, but also the quality and sturdiness of the hardware and casing.

The hard drive turned out to be pretty easy to take apart. Once the screws were off, you could see five platters, the actuator, the actuator arm, and multiple other structures. Data is stored on the magnetic platters which can be read by the actuator structures. Interestingly, the platters found inside the hard drive have a thickness of 0.05 in. I found this to be surprising since five of these disks fit inside the hard drive. To eliminate any information still stored on the disks, I made sure to scratch and damage their surface.

I was also very curious as to what I would find inside the old Apple computer. The process of actually opening the computer proved to be much more difficult than the hard drive. There were so many screws, it took me 20 minutes just to unscrew everything! Some parts, like the black battery seen in the lower corner of the right image attached above, were impossible to remove as screw heads required special screwdrivers. The most interesting part of this whole endeavor was seeing the keyboard structure. Contrary to my previous belief, the keys aren’t singularly attached to sensors, but are part of a larger sheet. Each keystroke then triggers a mechanism that allows for a current to flow.

I found this experiment to be very insightful, and I have definitely learned more about the inner workings of hard drives and computers! I would be interested to compare the insides of a newer generation of MacBook Air to my findings, which is not only more modern, but also significantly smaller in size.