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
Adapter or caddy is fine. Can get them on most shopping sites for cheap.
IIRC from my old office PC slinging days, a lot of those cases with 5-1/4 bays usually had slots for mounting screws that would allow you to mount a 3.5 drive flush to one sideusijg 2 screws. Then you get 1-3/4" 6-32 screw stand offs, thread it into the drive, and use that to mount it to the other side of the 5-1/4 bay.
Did that a lot to really old reused cases where there were a ton of 5-1/4 bays but only one 3.5 bay.
Thanks, I’m saving this. I’m very unacquainted with plumbing / carpentry so I wouldn’t have thought of this.