News|Movies|BD & DVD|Writings|Other

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Proprietary... screws?

4:50 PM / Technology / No Comments

Experience has taught me that, with anything computer-related, it's a bad idea to assume that everything will work out just hunky-dory first time. Even if you think you've prepared for every eventuality, there's a strong chance some unpredictable problem will hit you out of left field. That's why, yesterday, I decided to drag my computer out of its cubby-hole and install my new BD-ROM drive and also the one terabyte hard drive I recently picked up, rather than waiting 'til my birthday as I'd originally planned.

Smart move. The BD-ROM drive was fitted without any problems, but when it came to the hard drive, I quickly realised I was in trouble. My PC's case, an Antec Sonata III, comes with a curious solution to the age-old problem of hard disk vibration. (Although I can't say I've ever had a disk die on me due to too much rattling, despite being a computer user most of my life and having owned both more computers and more hard drives than most users!) Instead of screwing the drive directly into the chassis, you instead place the drive on an individual tray with silicone grommets that are designed to absorb vibration. These, however, appear to require proprietary screws. All well and good, I hear you say. Unfortunately for me, each active tray requires four screws, and Antec provide a grand total of eight: fine if you have two hard drives, but what if, like me, you've just picked up a third?

The answer seems to be "tough hooey". I tried virtually every similar-sized screw I could get my hands on, but couldn't get any of them to work. They were either not long enough, too long (so the hard drive would basically just bounce around on top of the grommets, rendering the whole "anti-vibration" thing completely moot) or too thick (in which case they were completely useless). I then went on a less than pleasant jaunt around town, plodding from store to store through the sweltering heat, only to be met with the same blank stare from every salesmen I presented my sample screw to. In the end, I gave up, went home and took a screw from each of my existing hard drives, fastening my new one in place with only two screws rather than the proper four. Hey, it works. Everything's up and running:

Seriously, though - proprietary screws? What were they thinking? It wouldn't be so bad if they offered replacement screws on their web site, but I can't find anything other than traditional thumb screws. I love my Sonata - it's cool, quiet and overall probably the best case I've ever had - but I really wish they would either use standardised screws or at least provide enough screws for all the drive bays.

No Comments

 
To combat spam, commenting is automatically disabled on entries older than 30 days.

Did a comment you tried to post accidentally get eaten by the spam filter? It happens from time to time. I get upwards of 200 spam comments every day and unfortunately don't have the time to weed through all of them in case something genuine ended up there by mistake. If one of your posts gets incorrectly flagged as spam, email me at whiggles[at]ntlworld[dot]com and I'll do my best to retrieve it.