Unsolved
1 Rookie
•
6 Posts
0
92
September 17th, 2025 13:37
Dell T5820 - Third Flex Bay removal
Hello,
I have a T5820 with Core-i9 9900X. I have two 3.5 Drives and the one M.2 NVMe bay. I'd like to add a third hard drive to the remaining bay but I cannot get the factory bezel off. Also, if I shine a light behind that bezel, I can see the connector and it has a yellow sticker over the 'do not plug in'.
What are my options here? The videos and manuals do not call this out at all.
Thanks!
No Events found!
PapaPee
1 Rookie
•
44 Posts
1
September 17th, 2025 16:15
I believe that, due to limited number of PCIe lanes with Core-X CPUs the NVMe Flexbay can only take a single drive (even though each Flexbay backplane is for a pair of bays) - which would explain the 'do not plug in' sticker
Options to add more storage include Dell Ultraspeed Dual card (needs a spare x8 PCIe slot), Dell Ultraspeed Quad card (needs a spare x16 PCIe slot), something like a Sabrent NVMe to PCIe adaptor (search for B0CQZ6SYD1 on Amazon UK) which needs a spare x4 PCIe slot
These will allow you to add NVMe storage - each NVMe drive needs 4 PCIe lanes so the Ultraspeed duel takes 2 x NVMe, Ultraspeed quad takes 2 x NVMe, and the Sabrent takes a single NVMe. The Ultraspeeds are available second hand through eBay, the Sabrent is fairly cheap on Amazon.
The NVMe drives can be up to the maximum size available, which I believe is 8TB at prices that are in the range of normal users.
(edited)
Petrucci914
1 Rookie
•
6 Posts
0
September 17th, 2025 16:38
@PapaPee That explains it. Could I just use the tray for the 5.25 bay for the third drive? I may not use hardware RAID and may just use Storage Spaces in Windows Server. I should have some spare SATA ports on the board, right?
PapaPee
1 Rookie
•
44 Posts
1
September 17th, 2025 16:52
@Petrucci914 I've added a normal SATA HDD in the 5.25" bay on one of my 5820's - there are a number of ways you can do including the official DELL kits but, assuming you're already out of warranty, there's nothing stopping you using 3rd party 5.25" adapters and DIYing it.
The Dell kits include a fan, I didn't add one but just make sure you're happy that the drives aren't going to overheat - a lot will depend on the type of drive and how heavily they're going to be used.
You should find an additional SATA power cable and data cable already available for the bay (mine were tucked into the gap behind the PSU) and, if you go for an adaptor that allows more than one drive, you could use a SATA power splitter and just run additional data cables from the motherboard SATA ports.
This would allow you to mount 2 x 2.5" and 1 x 3.5" drives into the DVD bay
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N1P804G
And this will allow you to power 3 drives from one SATA power lead
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004HTHJWM
Just add some extra SATA data leads of the correct length
If you used a 5400rpm drive and 2 SSDs, power and heat shouldn't really be an issue but you should keep an eye on drive temperatures over the first few weeks to see if a fan is needed or not.