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

  • dieTasse@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    8 hours ago

    I did just that. I also put ssd to a flopy disk bay and I screwed one drive on the outside of the case 😀 works like a charm.

  • InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • CmdrShepard42@lemm.eeEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • cecilkorik@lemmy.caEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        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.

      • atzanteol@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        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…

        • adarza@lemmy.caEnglish
          3·
          2 days ago

          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…

    • irmadlad@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      2 days ago

      It would be embarrasing if I disclosed all the weird ways I have ‘mounted’ SSD / HDD in a case before. LOL

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
    2·
    2 days ago

    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.

  • irmadlad@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    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/

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      2·
      9 hours ago

      Too bad you need to use their backup solution.
      I’d much rather use Veeam Backup and Replication instead of their proprietary solution.

      • irmadlad@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        8 hours ago

        There are solutions for everyone’s parameters, scenarios, and use cases. You just have to pick a horse and ride it.

        • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          1·
          5 hours ago

          And their B2 is too expensive in comparison.

          So I’ll be staying on local storage ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  • solrize@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • poVoq@slrpnk.netEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      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.