Grr. Hard Drive stuck in case!

[ExplodingBoy]

I have a Dell Dimension (4300). There's a hard drive in it that I want to replace. Drive is mounted via the usual Dell rails in the bottom slot of the 3.5" cage. It won't budge.

Normally, I'd squeeze the rail ends and slide the drive out. Tried that: no worky. Tried prying off the bay cover and pushing from the front: no worky. Even tried wiggling drive back and forth while alternately flexing the rail ends: no worky!

Basically nothing works and I'm open to suggestions. My guess is that the metal spring/clip thingie on the other end of the rail has come off the tracks and is wedged in somehow to a projection on the drive cage.

I made some abortive attempts to pry off the plastic cover of the system case so I can have access to the right side of the drive cage and maybe see what the problem is (can't see anything obvious from the left side) but there doesn't seem to be an easy way to take it off. As this is my main PC I don't want to fsck up the case.

 

[fstime]

Why do you want to take it out?

 

[ExplodingBoy]

Because I just imaged it onto a new, larger, faster drive. I could just leave it in, but I'm concerned about airflow around the new drive.

 

[boomerang]

Can you give us some pics?

We might be able to help if we can see the situation. I know I've done plenty of head scratching with OEM cases before.

 

[ExplodingBoy]

I'll try and get a pic posted later; but there's nothing obviously wrong (visually). The drive cage itself obscures the rails inside it, so you can't really tell if their bent or otherwise messed up. At least from the side that I have access to...

 

[imported_Phil]

Shove a flat-bladed screwdriver between the case and the rail, and then yank the drive backwards. That ought to shift it.