I need to add a Hard-Drive, but my case doesn't have space!

[Thin_J]

So, I open up the dell case today to pop in an extra 20gb hard drive. Guess what? There's no spot to place a second hard drive. I have an older case I could use, there's just one measly problem... I don't see a way to hook up it's power button to the dell motherboard. The connectors/wire colors are entirely different.

The guts that used to fill out that old case were for an Athlon 700 that doesn't exist anymore. It used this crazy little notched metal piece to slide onto some pins on the mobo to connect the power button.

The dell uses kind of a molex-looking connector for it's. Is this a standard thing now or would I end up with trouble if I switched cases?

I know there's always the alternative of just buying one huge new HD and starting the PC fresh.. but I honestly don't want to do that. I've only just now gotten it settled just the way I like it. It's taken a while for me to get it there too

[egrudzin]

Do you mean there are no bays period?  If you have an empty 5.25"  bay you can get a bracket that will allow you to bolt the smaller drive into the larger bay.

Is your case really small or do you just have a lot of junk in there?

Oh and the Dell motherboards have a proprietary layout for the front panel connectors.  It also may not completely line up properly to mount it in another case.

Of course if everything else fails, two words:  duct tape!

[Thin_J]

Well, it looks like this:



There isn't jack crap for room. There's that one spot in there that looks like it could hold something below the cd drives, but it sure as heck isn't made for a HD like it is now.

Pretty disappointing actually. I suppose I'll just have to start fresh at some point in the future. Shame.

[Smoove_B]

I managed to pick up one of these:

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=17-146-174&depa=0

A few months ago. I use it to either shuttle patches around LAN game events or bring music to work.

But depending on what your needs are, this could make a serviceable external drive.

The good thing about it is that if you eventually upgrade, you can just swap this hard drive out and put a DVD or CD burner into it.

It's also real good for people that have a lot of old hard drives laying around. You can just bop them into this and figure out what is on them without having to yank apart your PC and trying to get it booted back up.

[Jeff]

That's an excellent suggestion, Smoove. That'll take any ordinary internal HD and turn it into an external drive.  And it's USB 2.0, which has a high transfer rate.

Thin_J, Dell cases have always been notorious for having a proprietary internal design.

[stiffler]

I had a case with two hard drives and no free bays left.  I used an old drive cage and screwed it to the bottom of the case.  They also sell extender rails that screw onto the existing drive bays.  Looks like you could have one below your CDR, for example.  Duct tape isn't a bad idea.  On the other hand, using a glue gun IS.  The drives will heat up and cause the glue to fail.  Then the hard drives will fall and you know that isn't good.  I wish somebody told me that before I tried.

I also have two external drive bays.  They support both USB 2.0 and FireWire.  Once on they act like normal drives.  They seem plenty fast as well.  I just use them for backups and stuff, but they show up in Windows as regular hard drives.  You will want to turn off autoplay on that drive (or drives, if it has multiple partitions) or it might drive you crazy.  Also, be sure your motherboard isn't looking for external drives to boot from.

[Thin_J]

That's an awesome idea smoove.

Since the comments in there say that it works fine for cd burners, I suppose I could move my burner over. That certainly wouldn't hurt anything.

[stiffler]

Since the comments in there say that it works fine for cd burners, I suppose I could move my burner over. That certainly wouldn't hurt anything.

Yes, I have an external 12x DVD burner and it works fine over USB 2.0.  If you were to take one apart you would find it is a normal, internal drive, stuck inside one of those external cases.

Also, you wouldn't have to worry about powering the HD on when you wanted to use it.  With the CDR, just turn it on when needed.