What I have
I have an old Acer Aspire A515-51G and I also have a desire to have a home server. In combination this creates a need for the laptop to carry more HDDs than it can from factory. Usually it can take one M.2 SSD and one 2.5" SATA drive.
What I want
I want to make the laptop able to run at least 4 HDDs in RAID 5 for storage and have one SSD as boot drive.
What I did
The buying phase
- 4 HDDs
- M.2 to SATA adapter
- 12V/5V SATA power converter
- 12V 10A power supply
The designing phase
I needed space to hold the HDDs, so I designed a 3D printed a cage to attach to the bottom of my laptop. Two 80mm fans can be attach to it. You can see it on printables. Also I remixed a tray (here is the original) so the HDDs can slide in and out of the cage.
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The assembly phase
A cutout at the bottom of the laptop was needed to give access to the SATA ports of the adapter.
I put a 2.5" SSD into the already present place for it in the laptop.
Then the cage was attached to the laptop, the HDDs were put in their trays, the trays inside the cage and the cables attached to the adapter and HDDs.
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Madness!! Great work
I actually have a similar setup that started out just as janky!
This is an HP mini PC I found on Ebay, with an m.2 to 6x sata adapter, hole dremmeled through the top of the case with a custom printed I/o shield to stop the cables or my fingers getting sliced on the metal.
After about 2 years of it sitting in my cupboard (like the first pic), I decided to print myself a LabRax case for everything and make it cleaner, still the same setup inside though!
Before:
After:
That looks very clean. Though I wouls describe my setup as middle ground between your first and second pricture. I have a defines place for everything, just a few open cables.
What do you use to provide power to your drives?
I found some usb to sata power cables on Aliexpress. They can be a bit difficult to come across because there a so many usb to combined sata data/power connectors out there. I like your solution better, I was planning on buying a powered usb hub when I got more drives
It probably uses less power than a NAS, while having more CPU power and RAM
Plus nothing beats and upgrade using what you already have.
Ok, why get a case if you can just screw em on?
Also, add a fan to the HDD tray (can double for the laptop).
I didn’t get a case, I printed one. I am not sure what you mean by “just screm em on”.
Also, if you look carefully at the post, there are two 80mm fans.
Do you have more photos of the actual connection process? Like before and after installing the adapter?
No, but installing the adapter itself is exactly the same as installing an M.2 SSD. Afterwards you treat it the same as regular SATA ports in a PC. You connect the SATA data cables to the HDDs and the adapter, and provide power to the HDDs. Power is not handled by the adapter, this is what the DC 12V/5V converter is for.
Does this help you?
It’s a good explanation. I don’t have a spare laptop to attempt such engineering madness, lol.
Very cool looking project. I’ve been stripping motherboards from my busted old laptops recently, and am setting one up as a HiFi-ish HDD player at the moment. Next step would be some sort of NAS/homelab.
Since you’re already 3D printing parts, is there any reason you didn’t just pull the mobo, connect the drives and made a neat headless case for it all? Not that I don’t appreciate that weird lapdozer you made! 😂
This way I have keyboard and screen attached in case I want to use it, and designing around the motherboard seemed more work for not much benefit. I do have enough rack space to not need to care about bulk, the server will not be in a place anyone can hear it and noone will regularly look at it as well, so it does not need to be pretty.
I opted for easy maintainance and tried to not overengineer it, so that it can get used sooner.
Fair, I thought that might be your reasoning 🙂 Either way, I’ve added a few of your purchases to my own wish list for future projects. Thanks for the inspo!
That looks hot!
Dude this is so sick
very cool. wanted to do
exactly thatsomething similar with a Lenovo Ideapad I found. except, I don’t want to buy the adapter board, I just wanna utilise the existing two SATA ports in the laptop; one HDD, one DVD. haven’t figured a zerospend way to do that, as the SATA ports on the MB are female, as are the cables.second, don’t wanna use an external PSU, there’s gotta be a way to get 12 V off the board somehow or use a step-down module from, say, backlight?
does acer have a power-on on AC setting in the setup or do you have to power it on manually?
there’s gotta be a way to get 12 V off the board somehow
If you remove the battery (to avoid swelling), you’ll have a vacant port. But connecting that in any way that won’t fry your drives is another question I haven’t solved…
I power the laptop with its external PSU and removed the battery. Not sure that answers your question.
when you connect the PSU, does the laptop power on or do you have to press the power button? mine doesn’t power on on its own, with or without battery.
I have to press the power button.
That’s one nudge away from a disaster. I’d 3d print a shroud for the sata ports/connectors that uses the laptop base screws to hold it in place. That way the laptop could slide off the drive cage without every sata port snapping off.
Cage and laptop are screwed to each other.
Is the battery still in the laptop?
No, it is not. I took it out.
Take the battery out and run it only with the power cord
My only worry really is the m.2 to multi sata adapters reliability.
But it doesnt seem like there are sata-usb adapters with data only, that allow a single power source like yours 🤔
I might do something very similar with a mini PC
I’ve had a 5x version (op has the 6x) in my fileserver for easily 12+ months. Never given me an issue, just chugs along attached to an itx motherboard. I’ll probably need to get another one at some stage to keep up with the collection of content.
Using a pcie to 4x nvme riser, luckily this motherboard supports bifurcation so its single 16x pcie could become 24 sata drives if I ever required.
USB is far more unreliable compared to these M.2 to data adaptors from my experience.
Oh crazy, good to know! In that case I should have probably gone with that…
These m2 adapters are known to overheat, but otherwise they are much more reliable than usb to sata adapters.
I’ve considered this a few times, but having two separate power bricks seems like a bad idea to me.
Like, logically it should be perfectly fine, but it feels like it’s creating a problem.
What happens if the laptop powers down, don’t the hard drives keep running? Is that an issue?
What about sleep or just low power? It just feels like there’s situations where you want the power supplies to be off.
I get that NAS devices are on 24/7, but still… Makes me hesitate.
I’ve done similar things and not had an issue. If nothing is taking to the drive it just idles.
I did something similar awhile back. Since you already cut open the bottom of your laptop I would suggest you cutting another window over the CPU and adding a large plate of aluminum as a shelf between the laptop and you hard drives. Then add a shim so the CPU cooler and plate touch, then you will have a passively cool laptop server with an internal UPS battery.
I am not worried about cooling. The system will be in a cool place, the HDDs are cooled by the 80mm fans and the laptop has its own cooling system that I just de-dusted.
Any issues with the M.2 to SATA adapter? I’ve heard rumors to stay away from them, as the SATA controllers tend to overheat. Just wondering how the M.2 card behaves under load while trapped beneath the laptop.
Its more that laptop fans are not designed for 24/7 usage, it will wear out quickly. Plus I hated hearing it.
Fair, however, I have run this laptop in a different 24/7 setup for years and it was fine. Also the laptop lives in a place where noone needs to hear it.
