I'll admit I will take things apart to see what the look like inside. CD-ROM drives seem ideal, for some reason, though the last three times I pulled one apart was to see how to get the front off (so I could paint it).

I would say that the key bits of a CD-ROM drive are engineered in a way that lots of other elements in the end-product are not real fussy and can definitely stand up to a bit of punishment (such as dismantling the things) without failing. After all, the tech has been around long enough! My dad likes to tell a story about a mini HiFi unit he was diagnosing and noticed that he could hold the carriage of the CD player still while it was playing and it kept playing flawlessly! When he let it go, it moved nearly a centimetre to where it wanted to be, but still it kept playing flawlessly. :-)

Wade.