Help me shoehorn an extra drive into a SFF box?

[abbcccus]

A short while back newegg.com had the Zotac Zbox ID90 on sale so I grabbed one. It was inexpensive enough that I figured it'd be fun to just mess around with and then use as an HTPC. The main thing that intrigues me is sneaking another drive into it. It has an open space for one 2.5" drive, but it also has an open SATA port on the motherboard. There's enough room in the case for an mSATA drive with a small adapter to allow it to be connected to a standard SATA cable / power port, but that's what my questions are about.

In the first place, I believe the wireless / bluetooth card could be removed and replaced with the mSATA SSD, but I'm not completely sure about that and it would involve removing the HSF which would void the warranty, so I'd rather not go that route unless there's no other option. So here's the real question: looking at the board, you can see it has two clear cut power headers: one at the top of the picture for the HSF, and one at the bottom which powers the big, blue lighted "O" on the top of the case.

The HSF header would be the obvious one to use with a y splitter, but since it's controlling the HSF with PWM, that would seem to be a bad idea. On the other hand, the header at the bottom of the case would seem to be ideal, but I'm not sure (a) where I'd get a splitter for that kind of connector and (b) how to go about wiring it up to power the SSD since those mSATA drives seem to draw so little power. If you watch the video Zotac posted on this thing (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_tSCkRZMKs), you can see what it looks like with the HSF removed (the 36 second mark gives you a good look), but I can't really see anything under there that would be that useful for powering a drive.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I have to think that even if you could power the thing, cramming another HD in there would kill what little airflow you have too. Probably better of using an external.

 

[PliotronX]

I have to think that even if you could power the thing, cramming another HD in there would kill what little airflow you have too. Probably better of using an external.

+infinity those Zboxes roast hard drives. We have had a 90% failure rate with the ID88 models. My surviving model is one of the few and I attribute it to setting the fan to 100% at all times. The smart fan control is anything but.

 

[Shmee]

probably best to use SSD only with something that small.

 

[abbcccus]

+infinity those Zboxes roast hard drives. We have had a 90% failure rate with the ID88 models. My surviving model is one of the few and I attribute it to setting the fan to 100% at all times. The smart fan control is anything but.

Hmm, that's interesting. When I purchased it my plan was to just stuff an ssd in it and call it square, but the onboard SATA port is awfully temping. I guess I could just go ahead and take the HSF off and install an mSATA drive into the wireless card slot, but if the thing is just going to bake a HDD it might not be worth it. Maybe I should use a splitter on the fan header to power another fan inside the case instead of a drive!

Fry's had a special on the i7 Brix model a month or so ago which is what got me started looking at these things. That model apparently runs extremely hot and the fan is so loud it could drive you insane. This is a much bigger box than the Brix, but it still has a desktop i7 in it which is maybe just too much for such a small package. Oh well, I can always take the processor out (assuming the video is accurate and there's no soldering involved) and put a much more reasonable processor in it.