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February 24th, 2006 14:00

Adding third hard drive

In the past i succesfully added a second hard drive in my Dell dimension 8400.
Recently i've been thinking about adding a third hard drive.
While there are enough SATA connectors on the motherboard (4 of which 2 are used) there aren't enough power connectors for the SATA drive (only 2 of which all are used). This however can be solved by using a splitter or convertor.
The other problem however is the room in the case to place the third hard drive in.
I noticed there is a slot free under my floppy drive. While it looks almost the same in width and length,..it seems a hard drive WITH braces is just (barely) too width to fit in.

Is there a way to fit the third hard drive somewhere in the case (anyone ever managed to install a third hard drive) or am i doomed to have maximum two hard drives?

Thanks

41 Posts

February 25th, 2006 01:00

Yes I currently run 4 160gb HDD's in my 8400, I do not have a floppy drive so I was able to put 2 hard drives in that bay, if I remember correctly i used floopy mount rails for one of the drives and hdd rail for the other. I run 2 drives in raid 0 for media storage I share on my network and the OS is on a non-RAID drive, I used only one splitter for power as there was one available for the 3rd drive. hope this helps, Good luck. Spoon

3 Posts

February 26th, 2006 00:00


@Spoon_man wrote:
Yes I currently run 4 160gb HDD's in my 8400, I do not have a floppy drive so I was able to put 2 hard drives in that bay, if I remember correctly i used floopy mount rails for one of the drives and hdd rail for the other. I run 2 drives in raid 0 for media storage I share on my network and the OS is on a non-RAID drive, I used only one splitter for power as there was one available for the 3rd drive. hope this helps, Good luck. Spoon



Interesting. You really fitted two hard drives in your floppy disk bay? Then it must be possible for me aswell. But when i try to put the hd with the hd rail in it it's just a few millimeters too width. Without the rails the hd would easily fit,...but the hd wouldn't be well attached then.
I'm beginning to wonder wheter your floppy disk bay might be just slighly bigger (or your hd smaller, but that's simply illogical).
Anybody else managed to put more than 2 hard drives in their case?

290 Posts

February 26th, 2006 21:00

You will have to use the floppy bay rails, they're shorter and thinner than the HDD rails. I've mounted hard drives in the floppy bays of Dim. 2450, 4550, 8200, Optiplex GX270, 280, Precision 370, and 380's.

Marc

41 Posts

February 27th, 2006 01:00

MSL is correct, after reading your last post on this I had to open my box and recheck -it, and that's what I did,I ordered another set of floppy rails, dell was nice and did not charge for them, and slid right in. A tight fit for sure, but it does fit. I have run everest and it reports no problem with temps on those drives (41 and 44). It would be nice to find a 180deg. SATA cable though, as it's quite a bend on the top Hard drive. Otherwise no issues been running this way for 10 months. Spoon

3 Posts

March 1st, 2006 14:00

Thanks guys! I followed the advice and got it all working with those floppy rails.

I don't understand why the manual says the case supports maximum 2 hard drives.
Clearly you can easily fit up to 4 drives. ;)

41 Posts

March 1st, 2006 15:00

Fred,
glad to hear it worked out, yeah I've wondered that also. I always look at the specs on the new machines to see if they'll handle more too. Good luck with your new configuration. Spoon
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