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Laptop (Dell Vostro 1700) as 8TB NAS. Thoughts?

88keys

88keys

Golden Member
I have an old Dell Vostro 1700 with a dimming screen that's just not worth fixing so I'm considering connecting 2x 4TB desktop HDDs to it's onboard SATA ports and a gigabit ethernet adapter via it's ExpressCard slot.

To make it happen I would need to buy two of these:
SATA Female to Male adapter
And one of these

SYBA Gigabit ExpressCard Adapter


It seems like to would be a good idea but I have a few concerns.

I know that the power requirements are 'different' for many laptop peripherals so I'm not sure how my laptop would react to 2 having desktop HDDs connected to it's SATA ports.

The onboard battery would be nice as a UPS of sorts and would prevent shutdowns during brief power outages, however I am slightly concerned about leaving the battery in while the laptop is plugged in 24/7/365. I know millions of people do this, but I remember reading that this does pose a slight hazard. Is it better to leave the battery disconnected for this reason?
 
How are you planning to power the two desktop HDDs? The laptop only supplies +5v for HDDs, desktop drives require +12v too.
 
Yeah, they'd have to be in external enclosures.

The Vostro 1700 probably has enough CPU horsepower to do the job, but a mess of external components wired together isn't optimal. I'd probably sell the laptop as scrap (should be able to get ~$100 for it) and buy a lower-end purpose-built 2-bay NAS.
 
I have an old external enclosure (USB 2.0) that I was going to use. It supports two HDDs and I still have it's power adapter so I could still use it to power the HDDs.


But then again for not much more than what I'd be spending on the adapters to make this work I could just get this and be done.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optipl...241308?hash=item4d3d331b5c:g:D7MAAOSwpDdVgIe1

So long it has gigabit ethernet which it probably does.

Should be able to get 2 dekstop HDDs in there if I use the floppy bay.

I guess there are better solutions, the idea did sound neat for a brief time. Thanks.

And I could just come up with another project idea for my laptop.
 
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