[gentoo-user] Hard drive screws

[Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com>]

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Howdy,

I know this sounds like a silly question and I never thought I would
have to ask such a basic question like this.  I bought a external hard
drive enclosure and was trying to install a hard drive I had laying
around.  The screws that come with the enclosure doesn't fit.  The
screws have a coarse thread and it seems the drive case has fine
threads.  It's the only screws that come with it so it has to be for
that purpose.  Anyway, I dug around my screw bin and found a few screws
that fit better but still not quite right.  I went to ebay and typed in
100 hard drive screws.  I want to buy a bag of them to have around when
I need them.  It's amazing what I got for results.  Some list a brand
they fit.  Some say laptop, few mention a desktop system.  Looking at
pics, some seem to be coarse thread, some sort of fine thread.  Some
standard, some metric.  Some are phillips head and some look like allen
type or star type heads.  I'm sitting here wondering, is this nuts or
what?  Pardon the pun there.  It's just crazy.  lol

Is there not a standard sized screw that should fit all 3.5" and even
2.5" drives??  Whether they are spinning rust, SSD or the outdated
floppy drives.  Are they THAT different or are the pictures misleading? 
If there is a standard or does WD take one size screw while Seagate
takes another and Toshiba yet another?  If someone has found a size that
fits them all, could you please share the sizes or a link so I can have
something to go by?  I already have a few hundred screws that don't
fit.  I really don't need yet another 100 to add to the don't fit
anything pile. 

What happened to the simple days where things would just fit like they
should??  ^_O

Thanks for any hints.

Dale

:-)  :-) 

P. S. The enclosure I got is a eSATA or USB type.  I use the eSATA
connector.  Found it on Amazon and it's a Rosewill.  The enclosure not
long ago was about $60 each.  I got two for $54 with free shipping.  It
has a temp controlled fan too.  I bought other USB only enclosures that
wasn't worth the shipping much less the cost of the item.  I think I had
one that worked fairly well but was really slow.  Maybe it was USB2 but
I suspect it was defaulting to USB1.  A few others failed after a short
time, I suspect USB issues myself.  I still need to run up on a good
deal on a PMR type 8TB drive, designed for 24/7 use.  I need to expand
/home.  It's at 70% right now.  o_O

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