This tut will show you step by step on how to visually modify your hard drive.
TOOLS/SUPPLIES- Dremel
- Jigsaw
- Hot glue gun
- Sandpaper
- Bondo
- 1/8" sheet of wood (smallest sheet is about 3x3)
All of the supplies can be bought at your local hardware store.
Step 1
Draw your design on the 1/8" sheet of wood. (As shown in picture below) After you draw it out you will want to use your smallest chizzel bit for your Dremel. The bit looks like a small ball point about half the size of a pellet. Slowly chizzel away at your design.
After you are finished chizzeling the design out it should look like the picture below. Now I went ahead and spead bondo over the wood so I could sand it down to a nice smooth finish.
Now I took the piece of wood that I just cut out and placed it on top of the hard drive case. I then traced around and then made the trace about 1/4" smaller. This is in case I decide to put LEDs inside the hard drive sometime in the future. Go ahead and cut the smaller rectangle that you drew OR you can skip this whole process if you dont feel you will ever want LEDs in your hard drive. If this is the case then you will want to add some color to the design by painting a piece of plastic and glueing it behind the design. This will help make it stand out. (The final picture shows a colored backing)
Now use your hot glue gun to glue the piece of wood to the hard drive case. Make sure you center it up so it looks nice. You only need 4 dots of glue in the corners to hold it in place while you bondo.
Now spread the bondo around the edges of the wood so it looks like its all one piece. Dont worry, its going to look like crap right now. We have lots of sanding to do after it dries.
Ok its time to sand it down. You can use something like a 100 grit paper to start but when it gets closer to the finish you want to use 300+ grit so it stays nice and smooth.
After your done sanding you will want to prime it up for paint.
Once that is all done you can pick out your own paint. I like to use Krylon Fusion paint followed by some aeresol laquer. Below is the finished look of the hard drive mounted to the case it was designed for.
Linear Mode
