Tool for extracting 2.5" hard drive & enclosure?

Dear hardware experts:

My (Dell Inspiron 1420) laptop hard drive had a few bad sectors, so I bought a new (larger) drive and cloned my (Ubuntu) drive.

Everything works great... except I skipped a step (by rushing because my two very young kids were shouting for their daddy). The step I skipped: screwing the new hard drive into the removable enclosure before putting it back into the laptop.

Everything has worked great without the screws, so far. But I fear: 1) It might suffer excessive vibrations; and, 2) When I eventually want to remove the drive, I won't be able to get it out without damaging it.

The enclosure has a tab on top that you pull up to lift the drive and enclosure up vertically. But when I pull on that, one end of the top of the enclosure comes up but the hard drive stays in place. The (missing) screws fasten the drive to the enclosure.

There's a little gap around each side of the enclosure, so it should be possible to grab two or four sides of the enclosure and pull up, but I can't think of a tool for doing this. Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance for your time!

James Lavin

 

Turn the notebook upsidedown and let gravity do the work...