basic question re physically mounting disks in case

magicbastarder

been a long time since i had to think about these things.
i have an 8 year old XPS tower, with two 3.5" spindle disks installed, and it's showing its age, so i want to stick an SSD in. but both 3.5" bays are taken - is it possible to mount a HD inside the present but empty floppy disk bay, so i can run the three disks? there's room for one more SATA connection, power also.

else i'd have to get a 5.25" to 3.5" adapter to use one of the spare large bays, but they seem harder to come by.

ta!

magicbastarder

to answer my own question, yes it is possible. tiny bit of finessing, the spare power cable on the spur for the optical bays would have been too short if it was only a couple of mm shorter, but i managed to move one disk into the floppy bay (i'd been half expecting dell had some proprietary rail system which meant it might have been a non-standard size)

CoBo55

Does it have a dvd/cd drive? You can get adaptors that use the dvd bay to mount a 2.5 ssd.

magicbastarder

cheers, i don't think i'll need to do that now; i'm back up and running with one of the two disks in the floppy bay, and the SSD on order. it can go where the disk had been in the standard 3.5" bay.

SeanW

Bear in mind that most SATA SSDs are 2.5 inch form factor, not 3.5.

magicbastarder

cheers, i have the bracket on order too.

Flinty997

SSDs are feather light. Many people just velcro them to some part of the case.

I had one hanging out of the cable for years.

magicbastarder

huh. never even thought of that. that's an idea, there's loads of space inside.

Alun

Flinty997 wrote: »

SSDs are feather light. Many people just velcro them to some part of the case.

I had one hanging out of the cable for years.

This ^^^ I've used double sided sticky tape before as well

begbysback

Magnetic tape, would that interfere with the disk?

Xenoronin

HDD's must be mounted since they have spinning disks inside. SSDs have no moving parts so... well... you really can just chuck them in anywhere if you don't mind wiretopia. Magnetic tape probably wouldn't harm an SSD, but probably best to avoid it just in case.
Decided to google it just because I wasn't sure of it myself: https://serverfault.com/questions/352045/what-effects-do-magnets-have-on-hdds-and-ssds

CoBo55

Flinty997 wrote: »

SSDs are feather light. Many people just velcro them to some part of the case.

I had one hanging out of the cable for years.

I wouldn't mind but I have one stuck to the back of the router with double sided tape, never thought of suggesting it to the op.

The J Stands for Jay

Flinty997 wrote: »

SSDs are feather light. Many people just velcro them to some part of the case.

I had one hanging out of the cable for years.

I have one cable tied to part of the chassis; never an issue.

Flinty997

The only issue, is I personally like to have some airflow over them. But its not essential.

smacl

magicbastarder wrote: »

cheers, i have the bracket on order too.

You can also get double brackets that allow 2 x SSDs into a single 3.5 inch drive bay which can prove handy for later expansion.

CoBo55

smacl wrote: »

You can also get double brackets that allow 2 x SSDs into a single 3.5 inch drive bay which can prove handy for later expansion.

That's what I had in my old desktop.

H3llR4iser

begbysback wrote: »

Magnetic tape, would that interfere with the disk?

It would not harm the disk - not an SSD for sure, and not and hdd either; The concept "a magnet will erase your disk" is largely a myth - or better the magnetic field would need to be hilariously, obviosly strong - like setting a largeish neodimium magnet right on top of the HDD.

Case in point, there are plenty of magnetic accessories for PCs, from led strips to the NXZT puck to cable routers. Magnetic tape is usually not very strong 'though, you'd be better off with velcro or good old double-sided tape.

magicbastarder

disk was delivered yesterday, OS reinstalled, all well.

well, bar from being begged repeatedly to continue using Edge. MS is like a needy child at times.

CoBo55

I love a nice cleanly installed os it just zips along. W10 is a massive improvement on the 3 day ordeal it took with XP

magicbastarder

only issue i had was that for reasons lost in the mist of time, my computer had been set up for legacy boot and there was no way the new disk would boot. changing to UEFI fixed that.

CoBo55

Maybe you tried a Linux distro at some stage, they'll work with uefi now but it was an awful hassle with them a few years ago.

Serephucus

I treat SSD like the end of cables - jam them wherever they'll fit out of the way and call it a day.

K.O.Kiki

Flinty997 wrote: »

The only issue, is I personally like to have some airflow over them. But its not essential.

A 2.5" SSD doesn't need airflow.

Their controller will never get hot on account of maxing out at 550mb/s
And any airflow won't matter as the chips are essentially floating in an air gap between the shell (so can't even take advantage of cooling).

Saadyst

I've mutiple SSDs hanging on in drive bays with rubber bands