I’ve found an Inspiron with an FX8800P and 1 3.5” slot and a DVD slot. I intend to use it in my 3-2-1 backup with two drives (one hot, one warm) and the third backup in AWS Glacier (inb4 fuck Amazon - it’s cheap). It will also function as a NAS.
Have you placed a 3.5” drive in the 5.25” DVD bay? I understand you may need an adapter. Not sure if I can skip that.
The reason I can’t use a consumer NAS is because I want to power one of the drives off for power, longevity, and I don’t want to use RAID (also they’re quite $$$).
Edit:
Doesn’t look like a dock is necessary…
Yeah so the answer is no
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Hard to tell from that photo, but from this eBay screenshot it appears to be a laptop hard drive slot so no. You could get a 2.5” drive in there though.
Yeah… I’m not sure anymore that pre-builts are the best NAS machines. Looks like I’m buying piecemeal.
You just need to go for non small form factor machines. Anything with half height pcie cards is going to have like 1 3.5” bay max.
That said they rarely have much 3.5” space anyways so building is typically better. You can usually find a CPU mobo ram combo for cheap online. Then just pick a case and power supply and you’re good to go.
About $5USD on Amazon.
AWS Glacier (inb4 fuck Amazon - it’s cheap)
I mean, unlimited, personal backup on Backblaze is $99 USD per year. The only downside is restoring large, multi-tb backups. The way they get around that is ‘Restore by Mail’. You ‘rent’ a 10 tb drive(s) from them with your files and have it shipped to you. When you have transferred your data, you can return the drive for a full refund. Also, temporary storage is not backed up like CDs, etc. You have to physically transfer that to an internal HDD / SDD.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/introducing-the-restore-return-refund-program/
I think Deep Glacier is cheaper if you’re backing up less than 8 TB, so I think I may have to go with Backblaze if I end up using up all 12 TB. Really depends.
Just throwing it out there mate. I’m sure there may be others. I just have had a decent amount of time with them, and so far I have had no issues. However, I will say that one man’s solution is another man’s plague.
Are you sure that the DVD drive is a desktop 5.25 half height?
A lot of modern desktops use a laptop DVD drive now a days. That will only have room for a 2.5" drive, not a full 3.5"
Picture I linked looks like it will fit.Actually…
Duct-tape that shit to the inside of your case. lol
It would be embarrasing if I disclosed all the weird ways I have ‘mounted’ SSD / HDD in a case before. LOL
Be careful with powering HDDs on and off. That is actually the operation that puts the most strain on them AFAIK. Sadly there is no good rule of thumb when it does more harm than good, but I would guess if you turn it on more than once a week, you are probably doing more harm than good compared to just letting in run. Many people even intentionally turn off sleep-mode in “green” drives so that they don’t shut down automatically.
Many people even intentionally turn off sleep-mode in “green” drives so that they don’t shut down automatically.
I’ve always sort of wrestled with this conundrum. Powering on and off HDDs exerts the most wear imho, and so is it better to keep them powered on in order minimize intermittent start/stop wear, or power them off and assume that keeping them powered on means constant wear?
You can use an adapter just fine.
Or use a 5.5" drive caddy, that’s just a little drawer that slides in and out.
Real question is it you have enough SATA connectors available.The DVD drive should have a SATA connector already.
OP you can do this, I 3D printed a couple adapters to fit 3.5" drives into my old server case’s 5.25" slots while migrating everything to a new server. My only real concern with the whole thing is that there’s no rubber isolators on them which could cause issues longterm.
My only real concern with the whole thing is that there’s no rubber isolators on them which could cause issues longterm.
The number of times I’ve ran a system with a hard drive just sitting on the floor of the computer without issues…
the number of years i’ve run usb->sata adapters and had (up to a dozen or so) bare drives laying around and propped up anywhere i could find a spot…
I wouldn’t stress about it. People are overly delicate with their hard drives in my experience. They’re surprisingly sturdy and failure tends to be pretty random. There might be a slight statistical correlation in failure rates with minor vibration, but anecdotally I’ve got drives that vibrate the hell out of themselves (probably due to some other manufacturing defect) and have lasted decades with no errors, and plenty that fail completely for no perceptible reason at all. Spinning disks are just inherently unreliable, not that any storage technology is perfectly reliable. This is why backups are never optional.
If you mean a 2.5" drive (laptop sized) then yes you can generally do that. 3.5" drives are usually 1" thick and won’t fit in a slim DVD drive slot.
This isn’t about a laptop, but a full desktop case with 5.25" slots. 3.5" fit fine into these with a different kind of adapter.
Oh I see. Yeah DVD drives generally use the same SATA interface as hard drives.
They MAY use the little baby SATA connectors. I’d check first.
Adapter or caddy is fine. Can get them on most shopping sites for cheap.
IIRC from my old office PC slinging days, a lot of those cases with 5-1/4 bays usually had slots for mounting screws that would allow you to mount a 3.5 drive flush to one sideusijg 2 screws. Then you get 1-3/4" 6-32 screw stand offs, thread it into the drive, and use that to mount it to the other side of the 5-1/4 bay.
Did that a lot to really old reused cases where there were a ton of 5-1/4 bays but only one 3.5 bay.
Thanks, I’m saving this. I’m very unacquainted with plumbing / carpentry so I wouldn’t have thought of this.
you’re talking the ‘RED’ series inspiron minitower?
iirc there’s only one 3.5in bay adjacent to the slimline optical bay, and two 2.5in bays in a cage at the bottom front.
bays use drive rails which may or may not be present if the bay was unpopulated when originally shipped.
the pc uses 12vo power supply, so the drives are powered off the motherboard. those cables may also not be present if they weren’t needed for the original configuration.
slimline optical bays can often be filled with a caddy designed fit in the form factor, connecting to the optical power and sata, and hold a 2.5in ssd drive.
you will have to get ‘‘creative’’ to securely mount more than one 3.5in hdd inside.
yep, that one. They claim it has a 2tb hd in it so the 3.5" is most likely populated, but good catch! I also have extra cables lying around, so cables won’t be a worry.
creative
I hope not too creative. I think there’s some standard adapter online.
you aren’t putting a 3.5in in that slimline bay. you might be able to rig something to hold one there, though. that’s where the get ‘‘creative’’ part comes in.
you also have the 2x2.5in at the bottom but you’re missing the rails or caddies for them. should be like 5-6 bucks each or so on ebay or azn. don’t bother with those, though, unless you’re putting in hdd there. sata ssd can just be stuffed in the cage, they ain’t going anywhere.
be careful with whatever mb->sata power cables you have. make sure they’re the correct ones, as they aren’t all the same. you could get away with a 1->2 sata power splitter once on each mb power connection, as the output of each is designed for 2x3.5in hdd anyway.
edit: just looked at a similar model here. removing the slimline optical and stuffing a 3.5in hdd there will obstruct the cpu hsf a bit. might have to swap that for a lower profile cooler to put the drive there… BUT. if you take out the existing hdd (because its caddy thing gets in the way), there is just enough room along the flipout bit between that hdd bay and the 2.5in cage below to fit a 3.5in. would need a little ‘modification’ to the case there to rig a mount for it. but it fits. then the existing hdd can slide back in. (see pic, the ancient seagate hdd is placed in that space)
Occasionally some manufacturers use some weird proprietary connection but usually both DVD drives and 3.5" disks use the same SATA connectors. Heck, even in the old IDE/PATA days you could use the same connection on either.
So yeah, the connection is the same and probably will plug and play without any configuration needed
I did not, but of course you can. Either by using an adapter (maybe a printable one?), or – if it is an SSD – by just placing the drive there and hld it in place with one screw.
If there already is a drive installed you want to removed and there is no spare cover, you can also print one.
(You can of course buy the parts instead of printing them. Those adapters and covers are fully standardized and widely available.)
