Nice!

I made the first attempt to setup one of the R210s but... ah, the first hiccup: installing the hard drive requires a special type of screw that, according to the documentation, "Screws are supplied along with the hard drives ordered from Dell."

:mad:


What has happened here is that the eBay vendor discarded the hard drives in order to sell the unit... and discarded the mounting screws along with them.

:mad2:

At this time I am working out a combination of "aftermarket" screws along with plastic or rubber washers that should serve as a replacement.

Prolly no help in this instance, but, Fastenal.

Got one here in town, they're grrrreat!

You know it's a total embarrassment to me that this is taking so long!

Anyway, now that I have some much-needed time off, getting this done will be a priority.

Here are the screws that vex me. It's really the washers that are difficult, because they're meant to grab onto the metal edges of the hard drive brackets:

http://cellar.org/2013/screws1.jpg

Through Fastenal and research, I found out that your standard hard drive screw is a #6-32: the #6 indicating the girth of your screw, at .1380 inches. And 32 indicating 32 threads per inch.

Your standard hard drive screw is either .15" or .25" After some research, I found that Dell specifies that the screws above are "6-32X0.225 Philips Headed Screws". (They have specified the depth in decimal fractions of an inch.)

If you Google "6-32X0.225 Philips Headed Screws" you will find that the top results are all Dell-related. Because they are all included on the list of parts you get when you buy a hard drive from Dell.

The stinkin' bastards, creating a solution that's not industry standard, and then getting every ounce of profit they can from their enterprise customers. Oh I'm used to it, this is how they make money etc, but you have to pay twice the amount at Dell buying a hard drive that will be used for these servers.

So here are the Dell hard drive brackets, and you can see where the rubber washer thingie - not really a washer, it's meant to slide into the bracket and hold the drive in place:

http://cellar.org/2013/screws2.jpg

http://cellar.org/2013/screws3.jpg

And the brackets then fit neatly into the Dell servers. Which we want to be a solution that will last a decade. So we don't want to just put layers of duct tape in there.

I have four of the screws, so maybe the answer is just to buy 6-32 3/8" screws at Fastenal. They don't have to be Zinc Indented Hex Washer-head Phillips Machine Screws, but that would be nice. And then maybe I could carve out the right size of rubber to just sit around the screw and keep it in place.

If anyone has any better ideas... remember when thinking about this, vibration is our enemy. It can lower the life of the hard drive, it can weaken the SATA connector, all kinds of shit can go wrong.

vibration may be your enemy, but the hard drives are likely to be vibrating on their own. the only other moving piece is the family of fans that lives in the server, right? isolating them would help too.

I have a couple local places that have METRIC F*CKTONS of crap like this, but I can't get there today, sorry. Next time I'm in that neighborhood, I'll look around. I should probably have your phone number or something to contact you immediately, because I'd be happy to get the parts for you here. The place I have in mind is called REPC, they recycle pcs and related gear, including rack mount enterprise style stuff like this. I wonder if you called them if they could help.

Screw that. I'm calling them now.

more thinking out loud while on hold please look at images here for ideas

https://www.google.com/search?q=rubb...w=1440&bih=754

Maybe one of those putty products that hardens into rubber or silicone when baked? Like Sugru?

Dell customer support technician online now looking for that part.

do you have a part number I could send him to fetch?

Do you have a place that sells rubber/silicone hoses handy? I've made po man's grommets/rubber washers from an appropriately sized hose end a few times.

chat session finished.

I discovered that the part number for the screw is R9445. They cost two bucks each. How many do you need? The fellow sent me this picture of the screw. Attachment 43804

I said, what about the washer/grommet? He said the screws would work without them. UT, what do you think?

That is not the screw. Compare to my image above. In mine, half the screw is not threaded.

And it's really the washers that are needed.

I feel for you man. The chat people are pretty useless.

Might I add thanks for the effort!

you're welcome.

about the screw in teh picture from the tech. Do you think that screw would work with just the flat low profile head of the screw snugging up to the narrow end of the keyhole on the enclosure? giving a very nearly flush profile to the whole assembly?

I don't know, I'm not there. Yes, I can see that the screws are substantially different. but I can't tell if that difference is unimportant for holding the drive in the enclosure. That's your call.

about the screws.

you said 6-32 was the size of the screw. Ok, so any 6-32 screw will fit properly? And the third value was the length of the screw, right? so, 0.15" long or 0.25" long, but Dell specifies 0.225" long, is that correct?

Why not get the 0.25" and either washer up the head or nip off the leading threads by the amount req?

As for the grommet, didja look at the other long image link I posted? it looks like they had some rubber grommets of exactly the same shape you show in your post.

Yes, if we can find the right grommet, I can just order #6-32x3/8" Zinc Indented Hex Washer Head Phillips Machine Screws at Fastenal, and put the grommet on that.

Dell's spec may have been to use with a different hard drive rail that they offer in other configurations. These screws really are 3/8".

The word "grommet" may be the key... I didn't think of it as a grommet but that's clearly what it is.

What you have is a shoulder bolt, it's only threaded part way either to keep it from going too deep,and hitting something it shouldn't, or to keep from squeezing something too tight... or both.

The bracket shows a big hole Siamese with a little hole. logic would dictate you pop the screw/plastic thingy, into the big hole and slide the sucker over to the small hole, easy peazy. But, if you look at the bracket, each end would have to slide in the opposite direction. Crap. That tells me maybe the Siamese holes are for two different applications. Looks like the small holes are what fits your stuff.

6-32 is as common as stars in the sky, so are rubber grommets, I've got a shitload of both. Are you going to be home tomorrow?