Okay, my computer crashed only a couple of days after I got to Taiwan. It didn’t bother me that much, because I had deleted/backed up everything before I came, and there’s no better place to be if you need to buy a harddrive.
Once I got a new hard drive, however, I stripped one of the screws while taking out the old one. I still haven’t gotten it out (my tools here are very limited), but I think I’m going to get it out tonight.
In any case, if I get it out, if I put the new hard drive in with only three screws, just until I get another screw, will it hurt the computer?
Agreed. I don’t think I have any of my computer parts with all the screws in. They tend to get get lost and dropped when You move things. The object is to have it secure. The drive bays do most of the work so most of them can fail and you will still be Ok. The drive itself nor your computer will care. The worst that will happen is some jiggle. The slots in the bay prevent things from going too far but three screws should be plenty.
I have one drive in mine that stands upright and maintains balance by the stiffness of the IDE cable only, and it doesn’t really move at all unless you really shake the case. If your PC isn’t going anywhere, just make sure that the drive maintains a verticle or horizontonal position.
If you’re talking about the screws to mount the drive to the bracket, 4, 3, 2, 1, or zero will all work fine. I have a Dell which strangely has a power plug and cable and controller to handle an additional hard drive but no place to mount one, so it just hangs there.
Q: Why are babies so delicate?
A: Because they’re made with only one screw
