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I just picked up a tiny Dell Optiplex for my boss to use in his home office. He likes music and is planning to use it to store his entire music collection. But he's also loaded, and he expects great performance. So I recommended the Samsung 840 EVO 500 GB, and he agreed.

Unfortunately, I didn't realize how teeny this computer was when I ordered it from Dell Outlet. It only has one HDD cage. But I was planning on taking the 3.5" 7200 rpm drive out anyway. And my 2.5" to 3.5" adapter has two slots. I have a spare 500 GB 2.5" drive, and I was thinking of using it as an automated backup from his primary drive (but not RAID1, so it won't slow down the SSD). So he has some insurance on his music collection without bothering with external drives requiring him to actually do anything.

Question 1: The PSU is only 255 watts. Considering I'm taking a 3.5" 7200 rpm HDD out, do I have power to spare for a Samsung EVO in addition to a 2.5" 5400 rpm drive? The computer has 8 GB of RAM, an i5-3570 (no-k), an optical drive, and no expansion cards.

Question 2: The motherboard has three SATA ports, two of which are occupied by the HDD and ODD. No worries there. But there isn't a spare power connector. The HDD power cable is wide and SATA-style, fed by four wires. And the ODD power cable is narrow and SATA-style, fed by two very thin wires. Both power cables feed into a single 6-pin connector on the motherboard, of which I'm not seeing on Amazon (by my keywords, anyway.) Is there a wide SATA-style jumper that I can use to bring power to the second HDD I want to install? Like the SATA-equivalent of this extension cord? If not, is there an alternate 6-pin power cable I can buy that splits into the single 2-wire in addition to dual 4-wire SATA-style power connectors?

However crazy your adapter needs are, there are always options available.
You could replace the half-height 5¼" optical drive with a slim optical drive and a 3½" third-height device (like the original 7200 rpm hard-drive or a card reader).
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-3-5- ... 0009F8DV4/

You could install the 2½" SSD and the 2½" hard-drive in in the 3½" bay as you planned, using a SATA power splitter and an adapter from the laptop drive to regular SATA cables.
SATA power splitter:
http://www.amazon.com/Monoprice-7-inch- ... 002HR6I3C/
Slim SATA drive to desktop SATA adapter:
http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-6-Inch-S ... 009JXKQ9O/

It already has a slim ODD, haha.

That Y splitter looks promising. Although the price to shipping price ratio is a bit silly.

Do you think the 255 watt PSU is enough for an extra drive?

Let's assume that your 500 GB 5400 rpm laptop drive is something like this Seagate/Samsung ST500LM012/HN-M500MBB.
http://samsunghdd.seagate.com/includes/ ... -m8-ds.pdf
Read/write average power consumption = 2.3 watts.
Maximum spinup current = 1000 mA x 5 V = 5 watts.

I'd bet that your 255 watt power supply is able to handle 2% more load.

You make it sound so elementary.

Thanks for the help. I love TR and its people. I knew this was the right place to ask.

http://www.amazon.com/6-inch-SATA-Power ... B0032U7VMK

I think that one JAE linked should work fine (actually gives you three from one) but otherwise this one is cheaper with free shipping. I would trust a monoprice adapter before whatever no-name the thing I linked is but it will probably work fine too.

Don't worry about power - replacing a single 3.5" 7,200 rpm drive with an SSD and 2.5" drive probably uses less power overall, but even if it didn't you're probably talking less than 10 watts overall in a machine that probably draws a max of 100 watts with a 250 watt power supply. You're fine.

Am I the only one that sees no reason for a SSD being used as a media storage drive?
I never remember clicking on a Mp3 and thinking, that wasn't fast enough.

Yeah, SSD as a storage drive is ridiculous. But my boss has more money than sense. I told him the best thing to do was to install the OS and programs on the SSD and to put his music on a separate HDD. I told him this would require he know how to navigate from one drive to the other and to understand the purpose of each. This concerned him. I told him the problem would go away if he spends an extra $200 and he looked relieved.

Some people...

I'm hoping to have the sync between the two drives be automatic and invisible. I'm thinking Crashplan's tool.

I ordered a splitter. Thanks, guys.

Milo Burke wrote:

Yeah, SSD as a storage drive is ridiculous. But my boss has more money than sense. I told him the best thing to do was to install the OS and programs on the SSD and to put his music on a separate HDD. I told him this would require he know how to navigate from one drive to the other and to understand the purpose of each. This concerned him. I told him the problem would go away if he spends an extra $200 and he looked relieved.

You can always point the "My Music" folder to a different location (on the other drive). So long as he's looking and saving things in "My Music", he would never know the difference.

He doesn't look when he saves. He complains he can never find his files, and I ask how he saves them, how he organizes them. And he says he puts them "wherever it recommends I put them".

I spend an inordinate amount of time tending to my boss's music collection. What rubbish.