"Set Square" wrote in message ...
In an earlier contribution to this discussion,
James Hanley wrote:


would a plastic nylon screw hold a HDD and CD drive securely without
vibrations(seems like it should), dunno why they aren't standard -
since metal ones can be too long, hit the PCB and short the device.

I don't see why you shouldn't be able to use nylon screws for this purpose.

I always thought that the screw holes in HDDs and CD drives were blind -
rather than going right through to the internals. Are you *sure* this is
real problem?


definitely.
I've often tried screws from 1 cd drive in another drive and the other
one has shorted. Same with floppy drives.
The hard drive specs on the seagate website for example (for at least
one of their models and perhaps all of them), specify that screws be
no longer than around 4mm long (well, the ones on the bottom - should
one choose to screw the drive in from the bottom - can be about 5mm).

Also, HDDs take #6 screws and CD drives #4 (in all the cases i've
seen).

So i'm going for an antec case with removable drive rails for the
5.25" bays and #4 nylon thumbscrews for the 3.5" bays. I'm going to
avoid cases with 'screwless' designs. I'd like to use thumbscrews on
removable drive rails in my 5.25" bays too but i'm sure the drive
won't be able to slide out with those knobs in the way - since the
drive(with rails screwed on) fits snugly and slides out snugly!