Question on Norco SS-500

[Roscoe62]

About a month ago I purchased a Norco SS-500 drive cage. The main benefit I was looking to get from this unit is the ability to easily upgrade drives. Because the Norco SS-500 has the drive trays opening from the front I thought this would be GREAT from that perspective.

 

Over the weekend I had to replace one of the drives in the Norco so I powered down the UnRAID server and opened the tray of the drive that needed to be replaced. I was surprised to be holding an empty drive tray in my hand! I looked inside the slot and the drive was still sitting in there. Luckily I was able to (using 2 flat-head screwdrivers) coax the drive out and replace it.

 

It appears to me now that it is necessary to screw each of the drives into the caddies before sliding the trays into the main unit. However, traditional screws won't work because the screw head protrudes out far enough to prevent the trays from successfully being navigated into the main unit. I checked the box the Norco arrived in and there are NO screws there. What gives???!!

 

I can't be the only one to have stumbled across this little problem. Does anyone have any solutions?

 

I'm grateful for any suggestions.

[greenythebeast]

The screws you need are located here: http://www.ipcdirect.net/servlet/Detail?no=211

 

I would consider PMing Rajahal to see if he has any extras from the batch he bought a few months back. I bought a few off him instead of buying 100 of em.

[Roscoe62]

Thanks for the link!

 

I checked it out and a bag of 100 screws would certainly provide some comfort as far as backup goes. However, even though the bag is US$10, they were going to charge just under US$90 for postage (I live in NZ) - that's just a tad more than I want to spend.

 

I remembered seeing a YouTube clip of a guy in Australia unboxing a Norco SS-500. I checked out the video and I saw what I was looking for in the video - I got a look at the bag of screws that came with the Norco - the point to note is the bag is TINY!

 

Fortunately for me I hadn't yet thrown out the Norco box and, even though I'd checked the box a few times for the screws, knowing how small the bag was made me have a closer look. Sure enough the tiny bag of screws was there - tucked under one of the bottom cardboard flaps at the bottom of the box!

 

If, like me, you didn't know how small this bag of screws is, you could be forgiven for missing it completely! So I ended up getting the right screws without having to spend US$1 per unit so I'm happy.

 

I'll shut the server down again this weekend, fit the screws to each of the drives. Job done! 

[greenythebeast]

Glad you figured it out!

[jamerson9]

Just as an FYI for people who might need to get some of these screws. I had to get some last week as I bought off craigslist a Norco server and the guy had lost the screws.

 

They are available on ebay (search : server case screws), but you have to buy the ones that specify that it work with Norco servers or have extra thin undersides to the flat heads.

 

I had some screws for a dell server with plate steel trays which did not work with the thinner pressed steel trays of the Norco server.

[mrow]

:o :o :o :o :o :o

 

 

Unless your cages say tray-less or tool-less you have to mount the disks to the tray. You're lucky the insertion force even connected the disks to the backplane because there is a gap in the front of the tray to allow air to flow in over the disk.

 

It sounds like this was more along the lines of what you wanted. It's a 4 in 3, not a 5 in 3, but there are no trays so you just pop the disk in the slot and close the latch. www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816215246

 

 

 

I've got the one disk version of this same unit in my dedicated preclearing machine. It's excellent quality.