I just finish pre-clearing an HGST 8TB drive for parity.  I went to install it in may server by swapping it for an HGST 4 TB drive (vintage 2015) which is in a slot in an Icy Dock trayless carrier (3-in-2) and it wouldn't fit!  It would slide partially in but not seat and I could not close the door!  Ok, the Icy Dock is pretty old, maybe newer drives are slightly different geometry?  So then I attempted to mount in in the bottom-screw carrier in my very old AntecP180.  No dice!  The bottom mounting holes are in a different place!  WTF?  Are new 3.5" HDD drives different or is it just HGST?  Should I return and try a WD?

Some of the mounting holes have been removed to make more space for the internal platters. I would think it would still fit in the icy dock tray though. The overall size of the drives hasn’t changed.

In the last 6 months, I've installed 4 new drives ranging from 2TB 2.5in to 8TB Seagate - all featured the "normal" mounting points.

Do you have a spare drive that you can compare the HGST to just to verify?

I can say 2 of the standard bottom mounting  location holes on the HGST were removed. 2 are still there so you should still be able to screw it down to the tray with 2 screws. I still could and the tray still went in no problem. 

Edited March 28, 20188 yr by lionelhutz

Originally 3.5 drives were specced to have 6 screw holes (3 on each side) and 6 on the bottom.  The newest high capacity drives have sometimes removed the optional center 2 on the sides and the bottom has only had 4 screw holes in many kinds of drives for years.    In my opinion they were extra anyways.  I never use all the holes.  But I have not seen any holes moved.  My drive trays always fit, even if not all the holes exist on the drive.

 

https://thecus.kayako.com/Knowledgebase/Article/GetAttachment/708/8008

 

https://doc.xdevs.com/doc/Seagate/SFF-8300.PDF

Edited March 28, 20188 yr by tr0910