Um, that usually invalidates your warranty and is an absolute waste of time unless you don't have a paperclip, in which case I'd use a knife rather than ripping my drive apart.
meh...

Usually just after the warrenty expires something happens.

You Think using a knife wont void warrenty?

in this case i assumed that the drive was dead...

and just because you remove a warrenty sticker doesnt mean that you cant get warrenty work done. I bought a broken PS2 for $20 cdn and sent it in for repart ($10 for mailing) and got a new PS2 Back (extensive damage, so they gave me a new one) and i had personally opened up the ps2 and checked to see what was wrong (and the previous owner did to, and lost screws).

They didnt say anything and shipped it back Air Freight ($65 just for shipping)



Anyway, I do it all the time, athough i do use paper clips on the drivers that have the holes.