are there any older ex-office mini PCs like the elitedesk, optiplex, thinkstation, etc models that can fit a 3.5" drive? Not looking for anything new and thus expensive, just want some old junker (6/7/8th gen Intel) that can host some light stuff. thanks
Why 3.5" drive? (Just curious).
I’ve found prices aren’t necessarily any better at that size.
they are widely available and cheap.
Not the OP, but capacity: there aren’t 20TB 2.5 drives.
(Or 18, 16, 14, 12, or 10TB ones, for that matter…)
Kinda a dead-end product since laptops are all on SSDs, and enterprises have flocked to SSDs as well and that was essentially the entire market for that size of HDD.
Capacity like that is the only reason I could think of.
Putting that much data on just one drive freaks me out
The micro/tiny form factor PCs generally only have space for a 2.5" drive, while the SFF/desktop size PCs can fit at least one 3.5" drive.
Dell, 8th Gen Intel with one 3.5" drive bay: https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/optiplex-7060-sff/opti_7060_sff_setup_specs_manual/storage?guid=guid-4eab9a0b-c403-4bcd-b692-9419bddfed24&lang=en-us
Lenovo, should have one 3.5" drive bay: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/desktops/thinkcentre/m-series-sff/thinkcentre-m920s/11tc1mdm92s?orgRef=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.google.com%252F&srsltid=AfmBOorJ_EUW-QYIIIGy3i7ZJbitPq8UWoxdoQxtM_BNabrKcNojn7WL#tech_specs
yeah, those are too big. was hoping to score an ITX-sized abandonware for cheap and retrofit it with a 10 TB or so drive. I had this thing many moons ago:
it could fit a drive, with some wiggling and swearing. so I figured maybe something similar exists. building it from new parts is way, way out of budget.
edit: this is how it ran for close to a year.
