Replacement Screws

The screws can be in a bag taped to an empty drive tray. When I purchased my NV+ units however they were included in a small zip lock bag inside the zip lock bag containing basic documentation, warranty info etc.

Give NetGear technical support a call (see link in my sig). They can provide you with some screws for a reasonable fee.

Hmmm, the baggie with documentation does sound familiar. Something along the lines of "oh, those will be important someday, I best put them somewhere safe". God knows where I decided "safe" was all those years ago... I think I've moved house at least once since then!

I'll give support a call and see what happens, thanks for the advice.

A quick follow up:

UK Support were absolutely great. They suggested I open the 4th drive bay as the baggie could also be taped in there, but it wasn't. Subsequently spent two minutes registering the product - as I'd completely forgotten to do it - and then shipped me some screws for free, I should have them in a day or two.

No time spent in a queue, no fuss, just really, really helpful. I wish I'd taken the support guy's name so I could have thanked him personally.

For a temporary fix you can "borrow" some of the screws holding the side panels on as well as two screws from each of the existing trays. All of the screws in the chassis are the same as the drive screws with the sole exception being the four holding the fan in place.

Note: yours came with factory drives and there have been numerous comments that they seem to have been put in with a torque wrench. It will take a good amount of downward pressure with a correct sized screwdriver (either a #0 or #1 Phillips at most) to remove. Once of the Jedi commented once that they only use two screws per drive in a diagonal pattern in the lab. But, they are also testing the drives so they get swapped around a lot, and two screws go in and out faster than four.

Found myself in the same position and just wanted to document what I found about screws for ReadyNAS drives here.

The type of screw needed is called a 6-32 UNC 2B, which only identifies the threading and can be found with an annoying range of punctuations and spacings around the net. That's just to make searching online as difficult as possible, I guess.

You can read more than you'd ever want on the 'unified thread standard' that the above naming comes from on Wikipedia here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Thread_Standard#Designation

Beyond the thread information, you want countersunk 4mm to 6mm, 3/16" or 1/4" length. I found these on eBay easily and cheaply enough, although the variability of screw descriptions can hide a lot of good sources from you.

Don't buy M3 5mm screws, as that's the mounting standard for 2.5" drives but not 3.5". That's the voice of experience talking.

Hope this helps someone, or me when I inevitably forget.