As long as you use the included heatsink. The heatsink will hold the SSD correctly and securely. Back in the day, when I worked for HP. Those screws were impossible to find, even internally. Plastic covered paperclips bent into an appropriate shaped was used by us, for shorter SSDs. Yet another irritation with the Z-Drives is the bracket holes. Try putting almost any other HHL bracket on. The holes dont line up.
Yeah, some people I know at HP said the same thing. And yes, the screw hole spacing for the PCIe bracket is also not typical. Makes one wonder if HP went out of their way to just make everything a bit "different?"
I appreciate your creative solution, and I have a suggestion. Given that you're dealing with aluminum, a very soft material, perhaps you could skip the drill entirely, and hand-twist the tap into the existing hole? A fairly good tap should cut the new threads with minimal effort, using the existing hole as a guide for the tap. This approach may require stepping up the tap size incrementally, one-at-a- time. I would be concerned I would inadvertently damage something by using the handheld drill. Nevertheless, I'm glad it worked for you, and I appreciate you sharing your techniques!
Actually, i normally would hand tap these, but for the sake of making a shorter video, I decided to use power tools for the demonstration. nonetheless, hopefully the idea/concept will be useful to some people! :-)
If you're doing a lot of these, a drill press adapter for your drill, dremel drill press, or mini drill press, would make sure you're always drilling the hole straight, and they make tap holders with either socket square-drives or a quick change hex shank. With a tap this small it's really easy to break the tap, you can get quick change drill bits, then it'd be really easy to switch the drill press rig back and forth. I have too many HP things with this screw hanging over my head so I might need to set up this tooling. Last time I looked, the cheapest I could find that screw for was Seven Dollars Each.
Yeah, this isn't the best way to cut those threads straight, but it was good enough for the demonstration. I already finished processing the box of turbo drives I had, but if I had to do more, definitely better to rig properly. I couldn't even find the HP screws anywhere. I talked to some people who work at HP, and even they said they have a hard time finding those M.2 mounting screws internally. Finding a source for the HP screws would be nice, but in the case where the 1.6mm threads are stripped, switching to the more common 2.0mm stand-offs I think is the way to go. I'm sure there's better way to get it done, but I hope this will be helpful to you. :-)
At the beginning of the video, you saw me remove the heatsink. That heatsink is screwed into those stand-offs that hold the bracket too. Yeah, love Wiha drivers. Have lots of different tools here.
Had same problem with gigabyte motherboards ssd screw , it's the same size.. so if you find some gigabyte screws, definitely not same screws on msi asus motherboards much smaller.
Gigabyte boards use a 1.6mm thread screw for the M.2 mounting? HP and Gigabyte must like copying each other... both are notorious for the SMBus conflicts too!
As long as you use the included heatsink. The heatsink will hold the SSD correctly and securely. Back in the day, when I worked for HP. Those screws were impossible to find, even internally. Plastic covered paperclips bent into an appropriate shaped was used by us, for shorter SSDs. Yet another irritation with the Z-Drives is the bracket holes. Try putting almost any other HHL bracket on. The holes dont line up.
Yeah, some people I know at HP said the same thing. And yes, the screw hole spacing for the PCIe bracket is also not typical. Makes one wonder if HP went out of their way to just make everything a bit "different?"
@@ArtofServer my, what highly justified cynicism you have 😂
I appreciate your creative solution, and I have a suggestion. Given that you're dealing with aluminum, a very soft material, perhaps you could skip the drill entirely, and hand-twist the tap into the existing hole? A fairly good tap should cut the new threads with minimal effort, using the existing hole as a guide for the tap. This approach may require stepping up the tap size incrementally, one-at-a- time. I would be concerned I would inadvertently damage something by using the handheld drill. Nevertheless, I'm glad it worked for you, and I appreciate you sharing your techniques!
Actually, i normally would hand tap these, but for the sake of making a shorter video, I decided to use power tools for the demonstration. nonetheless, hopefully the idea/concept will be useful to some people! :-)
I have this and and no screw. Been looking through my bit and pieces of computer parts but no luck. Thank you for the information 😊
Hope it helped! :-)
If you're doing a lot of these, a drill press adapter for your drill, dremel drill press, or mini drill press, would make sure you're always drilling the hole straight, and they make tap holders with either socket square-drives or a quick change hex shank. With a tap this small it's really easy to break the tap, you can get quick change drill bits, then it'd be really easy to switch the drill press rig back and forth. I have too many HP things with this screw hanging over my head so I might need to set up this tooling. Last time I looked, the cheapest I could find that screw for was Seven Dollars Each.
Yeah, this isn't the best way to cut those threads straight, but it was good enough for the demonstration. I already finished processing the box of turbo drives I had, but if I had to do more, definitely better to rig properly.
I couldn't even find the HP screws anywhere. I talked to some people who work at HP, and even they said they have a hard time finding those M.2 mounting screws internally. Finding a source for the HP screws would be nice, but in the case where the 1.6mm threads are stripped, switching to the more common 2.0mm stand-offs I think is the way to go.
I'm sure there's better way to get it done, but I hope this will be helpful to you. :-)
Thanks for this! Now I have to go dig out my hoard of Z drive boards to see if any are missing the screw 🙂
Check'em out! hope this helps! :-)
Nobody gonna ask why the bracket held on by hex standoffs? And promise me those are real Wihas.
At the beginning of the video, you saw me remove the heatsink. That heatsink is screwed into those stand-offs that hold the bracket too.
Yeah, love Wiha drivers. Have lots of different tools here.
@@ArtofServer doh! that does make sense I guess. I lose those screws so much I'm used to holding nvmes and heatsinks on with zipties
@@ArtofServer… Wiha drivers for the win! Definitely top-quality.
I grabbed a bag of 100 similar sized black nylon screws (not sure maybe M2x4) for a few buck years ago... ;)
Cool!
Just get a regular tap handle. You should be using a 1.6mm drill bit for an M2x0.4 tap.
Thanks for the tip!
I'm dealing with one of these screws and having a hard time, what type of screwdriver does it use?
torx
@@ArtofServer thanks! Got a precision set arriving tonight and I'll give it a go
Had same problem with gigabyte motherboards ssd screw , it's the same size.. so if you find some gigabyte screws, definitely not same screws on msi asus motherboards much smaller.
Gigabyte boards use a 1.6mm thread screw for the M.2 mounting? HP and Gigabyte must like copying each other... both are notorious for the SMBus conflicts too!
Me: uses low-brand cheap ssds in servers. They work better than a Kingston a400
I'm no fan of Kingston SSDs. But make sure your low-brand cheap SSDs are approved by your family. ;-P