How To Remove a Drive from a Netgear ReadyNAS Without Breaking Anything

It was time for Mike to upgrade his drives in his NETGEAR ReadyNAS network storage enclosure. After an extremely infuriating experience, the tool-less drive tray broke in his hands. What did he miss? In the video, he’s going to show you exactly how to pull the drive out with a lot less swearing and breaking things.

The method shown should work for most of NETGEAR’s ReadyNAS storage devices that use a 3.5-inch hard drive in a tool-less tray. They use a plastic retaining bracket that hooks to the bare hard drive before sliding into the metal drive tray. Hopefully, this will help alleviate any frustration you might have with retrieving your drive from this somewhat non-intuitive setup.

As you replace the drive with a newer or larger one, keep in mind that some drives are now shipping without a drilled middle hole. This means the center nub on the plastic tray will have nowhere to go and prevent the drive from sliding into the tray. To use drives with the missing hole, all you have to do is grind down the middle nub on the plastic piece. The remaining four holes on this plastic piece can now seat correctly onto the drive, allowing it to slide easily into the metal tray and click into place. There should be no danger of loosening because of the tight mechanical fit.

If this video helped you avoid a lot of frustration, please let us know in the comments below!