Question about MB hard drive compartment

[owen22]

Hi guys,

Was in the process of replacing my MB hard drive for a Western Digital 500Gb one and something really annoying happened when I was taking out one of the torx screws on the hard disk 'caddy' (the piece with the white plastic pull tab).

Stupidly I was taking the screws out of the caddy above my open MB and, you can probably guess this bit, the torx screw fell out, bounced and went into the open hard drive compartment.

I've had a torch out and can kind of see inside the hard disk compartment (anyone that tried looking inside here will know how tricky this is) but I can't see the screw anywhere!

I've had a look at various online photos of the compartment but I'm trying to work out whether it's a 'sealed' unit or there are any holes leading to other parts of my MB that the screw could have gone inside?

I'd really rather avoid taking the whole bottom case off as I've never done this before and judging by my success in replacing the hard disk I'd rather not run the risk of messing that up too!!

Any helpful information/advice anyone can give???

Thanks!

 

[stridemat]

Is the screw rattling around inside the compartment?

 

[owen22]

Is the screw rattling around inside the compartment?

No... that's the weird thing. I was wondering whether any of the metal parts forming the sides of the compartment were magnetized.

I should point out that I didn't actually see the screw go into the compartment but it fell onto my MB and I could see where else it could have gone...

 

[stridemat]

This may be the total wrong advice but you have no guarantee that its actually in the compartment. The screw could have bounced out or anything! Can the hard drive fit it, as in there is nothing in the way? If it does forget about the missing screw!

If it doesn't then take it to an Apple Store and get them to try and find the screw. It shouldn't take them too long to take of the bottom case. Though I see no reason why it wouldn't work.

...metal parts forming the sides of the compartment were magnetised

I doubt anything is magnetised, hard drives and magnets do not get on.

 

[owen22]

This may be the total wrong advice but you have no guarantee that its actually in the compartment. The screw could have bounced out or anything! Can the hard drive fit it, as in there is nothing in the way? If it does forget about the missing screw!

This is all true, which is why its so frustrating! The hard drive appears to fit in fine which I thought would give me the answer - that's why I was wondering whether there were any gaps in the compartment leading to other parts of the MB.

I doubt anything is magnetised, hard drives and magnets do not get on.

That's what I thought but the fact that the power socket bit is magnetised made me wonder...

Now I'm thinking about it, one place I didn't check was the memory compartments. I hadn't taken out the memory so if it did go in there it couldn't have gone in too far so I'll check when I'm back at home.

Thanks for the advice!