Laptop HDD as a Server OS Drive

[smitbret]

My OS drive in my WHS 2011 box is dying. All of my 3.5" bays are full of drives and the OS drive is starting to go bad. Would there be any complications with replacing it with a 2.5" drive that I can mount elsewhere to free up the slot for a data drive.

The SATA connectors are all the same, right?

The speed of a laptop drive is not an issue since it's not my everyday driver and just needs to load the OS and maybe run a little Handbrake video encode from time to time.

 

[Hellhammer]

SATA and power connectors are the same, so speed and physical form factor are the only notable differences. Should work fine.

 

[Towermax]

How reliable are laptop drives compared to desktop drives?

I also need to replace the OS drive on my WHS server, and I have a couple of spare 320GB laptop drives sitting around.

 

[fluffmonster]

I am using an old 80 GB laptop hdd in my ubuntu server for the OS. It was probably 3 or more years old when I put it in and has been going for a year since. Dunno how much more reliability it has left but it's quiet and low power and it works.

 

[kmmatney]

I'm using 2 laptop drives as data drives in my whs 2011 server. My OS drive is an old 80GB intel 1st gen SSD and that works fine (but tricky for he installation, since WHS won't install on drives smaller than 160gb. In any case, I'm sure a laptop drive would be fine for the OS, since it will be idle most of he time on a home server.