Can you buy empty XServe drive modules?

[sidewinder]

Just got a brand new xserve, but in between the order getting passed between people, one of the drives got left off the order, and I needed 2.

 

Apple want £270 for another 1Tb drive, yet I can buy the same Hitachi drive on its own for £150. So I thought it would be easy to buy an empty module to fit your own drive into but it seems Apple dont do that

 

Does anywhere sell them or am I really going to have to spend £120 on a piece of plastic?

[DMcCoy]

The modules are specifically *not* sold empty I believe, sometimes they come up now and again on ebay but thats it. You can change the disk afterwards but still have to buy it with something in.

[HodgeHi]

I was told that apple flash the hdd firmware with their own which is why they no longer sell the caddys. They did for the G5 Xserves but not for the Intel ones.

 

Just what someone told me

[SYNACK]

I know that you can get these for the hp servers but it is a massive hassle and you need a very dedicated supplier to get them through the spare parts division. Or as DrMcCoy said just buy the cheapest smallest drives in the caddys that you can find on eBay and swap out the drives. Have done this before many times with hp kit.

 

@HodgeHi - knowing apple they probably do use their own firmware on the drives but the RAID unit should still work with other drives unless they have specifically disabled it.