What do you use your second 5.25" bay for?

[thelazyone22]

First off, thanks to Anandtech and assassin24 for rolling the HTPC forum out; definitely an excellent addition.

I am curious what people put in their second external 5.25" bay. Clearly the first bay houses a BD drive and the "conventional wisdom" is to add a 3.5" card reader to the second but I'm curious if the card reader is actually all that useful. Granted I'm not a photography person by any stretch of the imagination but I'm guessing that's what it's for: being able to quickly throw up a photo slideshow off an SD card or something. I use a USB card reader for my desktop and the rare instances I dig it out are merely so I can dump stuff to a loose microSD card before replacing the one in my phone/tablet.

Considering the fact that space is at such a premium in an HTPC build, what do you have in that second 5.25" bay? A 3.5" card reader? A hard drive? Secondary BD/DVD/HD-DVD drive? Cable storage?

Thanks in advance!

 

[VirtualLarry]

Honestly? I haven't seen too many HTPC cases (Smaller ones, MATX and smaller), that have two 5.25" bays. I've seen a few with an exposed 5.25 and a 3.5 though. Is that what you meant?

 

[Arkitekt]

I don't plan to put a ODD in my case's 5.25" inch bay. Instead I was thinking of throwing in a SilverStone FP52

 

[boomhower]

I don't plan to put a ODD in my case's 5.25" inch bay. Instead I was thinking of throwing in a SilverStone FP52

Looks like that would be awfully distracting in a HTPC.

OP: I had another harddrive behind it.

 

[cybrsage]

I have another HDD behind one of mine.

 

[billyb0b]

no 2nd 5.25 bay for me with my HTPC.... but if there was one it's a nice space to tuck a hard drive

 

[Auric]

I would prefer to use the space for additional hard drives (particularly via trayless backplane - i.e. 3 in 2, 4 in 3, 5 in 3). External card readers are more practical for various reasons: formats/specs update relatively frequently, portability between devices, easier to handle cards (may be inserted into reader before reader insterted into USB port). These days, I would not even bother with an internal ODD either and just use a slim external unless maybe the chosen case has a dedicated slim bay.

 

[piasabird]

Seems like you could take a normal 5.25 bay and squeze in both a thin laptop style DVD/BLURAY and also a hard drive. Those darn thin ones do cost a lot though.

 

[Zorba]

I only have one 5.25" slot. I do have an external 3.5" that is covered by a flap, which is filled with a HDD. If I had any more room I would add another HDD.

 

[assassin24]

I like to use Velcro in my HTPCs to see where I can place the SSD. This often free up a space for the 3.5" hard drive.

 

[CA19100]

I use one of my extra 5.25 bays for an Antec Easy Swap USM -- a SATA backplane for the many 2.5" drives I have laying around. Much more convenient (and faster) than using a USB adapter. It does double duty holding my little SSD that I use for Intel Smart Response. And if you pop out the little frame on the front, you can directly insert Seagate Free Agent drives as well.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

My X-Fi breakout box - with additional inputs, outputs and controls.

 

[jtvang125]

My HD160 has an exposed 5.25 for a optical drive, unexposed 3.5 on top of that and a hard drive cage that can hold an additional 3 hard drives. I have my bluray in 5.25, a ssd in the 3.5 and 2 hdds in the drive cage. Kinda redundant to have so many hard drives in there when I have a 20TB file server on the network but I had spare drives laying around from previous builds so why not?