Adding Second HDD to SFF GX260

Question

Hi Folks,   I have an Optiplex GX260 SFF and would like to add a secondary hard drive.  When I opened it up, I clearly did not see space for it.   Ok, so now my question is, does anyone think that I can take out the FDD (I have not carried a floppy in 3 years or more now) cause we use USB drives all the time for moving files around and replace that area with a HDD.   By lookin in the BIOS, there appears to be 2 IDE controllers, one connected to the HDD and one to the Optical drive, so I should be able to cable it in.   Your input is highly appreciated.

Dev Mgr · Answer

The floppy drive in the SFF chassis is a low profile floppy drive (like those used in laptops). This bay won't hold a regular sized 3.5' drive. A 2.5' drive might work, but you may have a really hard time trying to find some way to secure that drive in that bay as there's no standard for this and there are no Dell brackets to do this.

chepeloni · Answer

i tell you something, i have an optiplex gx240, and i'm working on the same thing right now.  same problem, had the same idea, and it worked out somehow.  the problem i'm dealing with right now, is about winxp recognizing the drive, BIOS does, brand name, model and capacity, now with winxp, if i go under device manager, the disk is there, but when i open windows explorer, the disk is not showing.  why?? no clue yet ........... that's why i came here, to find out, but can't find anything.

Pickle100 · Answer

I wish I could get that far - but your post gives me hope.   I am not sure if you have tried this or not - but you may need to go into the disk manager - I think you can get there by right clicking on My Computer and selecting manage.   From there you can manage your disks and I bet you will see the drive there but all that is needed is to simply assign a drive letter.  You may also want to format the drive from there - You might need to turn a physical drive into a logical one - I think you can do all of that from this disk management utility.   You see, I was playing with some laptop drives a few months back, and I was doing some creative swapping - make sure you format the drive with the software that came with the drive.  That will prepare the drive to be recognized by WinXP (Pro I hope you are using).   Sorry for the scattered info, but I learn mostly from trial and error, thus the nature of my post.   By the way, what kind of drive did you use as secondary HDD?  What size and how big and what brand as well?   Can you give me some detail as to how you fit the drive in the FDD space?  The more the better.   This gives me hope, thanks to both posts.

chepeloni · Answer

pickle, it was as easy as removing the FDD and replace it with the new (secondary) HDD.

HDD is a samsung SP2514N, 250 GB, 3.5"

i was worried about power, this SFF dell computers came with a 80 W power supply. but the computer has been on all this time and working fine.

first, i tried to put the 2nd hdd behind the original drive (between original disk and case), but there is not enough space back there. then i just took the fdd off and replace it with the new secondary drive, i have setup as slave right now, since master is the dvd writer. the cable won't let you do it in a different way unless you twist it so bad.

i'm gonna try the disk manager thing you were talking about.

good luck.

Message Edited by chepeloni on 05-27-200609:09 PM

chepeloni · Answer

pickle, i think is working, it is formatting right now.

Dev Mgr · Answer

I'll have to check one of these chassis, but from what I remembered and from the picture I could have sworn the floppy drive is about half the thickness of a regular ATA drive. Message Edited by Dev Mgr on 05-29-200607:42 AM

chepeloni · Answer

pickle and dev mgr.   i understand pickle has a gx260, i don't know how this one looks like, but, i'm pretty sure chassis is the same as the gx240, that's the one i was working on.  as i said, i just removed the fdd, unscrewed the green plastic things on both sides, scre'wed them back to the side of the HDD and put it back, that was it.  the way i put cables back??  well, first, you don't need the FDD cable anymore, in this computer i was working on, primary cable had only one connector, so just leave that cable for primary hdd, for the second hdd i used the secondary cable, the one used by the optical drive, that one has 2 connectors, i had to leave the optical drive as a master, and set de 2nd hdd as the slave, not a big deal.  i was having problems with winxp pro recognizing the disc, but thanks to pickle and some other guy, i resolved the problem.  now this optiplex gx240 has a second 250 GB, 3.5' Samsung HDD.  and it's been working just fine for 3 days now.   so go ahead pickle and give it a try.

BBraxton · Answer

far out (to quote John Denver)

chepeloni · Answer

@BBraxton wrote: far out (to quote John Denver) ???

briareus · Answer

I think the GX240 is actually larger than the GX260. On the GX260, the floppy drive is mounted to the same bracket as the CDROM drive. I can't see placing a 3.5' HDD in place of the floppy on a 260.

Storage, Drives & Media

Adding Second HDD to SFF GX260

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