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

  • irmadladEnglish
    3•18 hours ago

    Many people even intentionally turn off sleep-mode in “green” drives so that they don’t shut down automatically.

    I’ve always sort of wrestled with this conundrum. Powering on and off HDDs exerts the most wear imho, and so is it better to keep them powered on in order minimize intermittent start/stop wear, or power them off and assume that keeping them powered on means constant wear?

    • poVoqEnglish
      1•8 hours ago

      AFAIK the “wear” does not mainly come from the spinning, but from temperature changes that make parts slightly expand and contract in size. An always on HDD has pretty constant temperature.