cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/66988984

What I have

I have an old Acer Aspire A515-51G and I also have a desire to have a home server. In combination this creates a need for the laptop to carry more HDDs than it can from factory. Usually it can take one M.2 SSD and one 2.5" SATA drive.

What I want

I want to make the laptop able to run at least 4 HDDs in RAID 5 for storage and have one SSD as boot drive.

What I did

The buying phase

• 4 HDDs
• M.2 to SATA adapter
• 12V/5V SATA power converter
• 12V 10A power supply

The designing phase

I needed space to hold the HDDs, so I designed a 3D printed a cage to attach to the bottom of my laptop. Two 80mm fans can be attach to it. You can see it on printables. Also I remixed a tray (here is the original) so the HDDs can slide in and out of the cage.

.

The assembly phase

A cutout at the bottom of the laptop was needed to give access to the SATA ports of the adapter.

I put a 2.5" SSD into the already present place for it in the laptop.

Then the cage was attached to the laptop, the HDDs were put in their trays, the trays inside the cage and the cables attached to the adapter and HDDs.

Excuse me? LOL!

Seriously, as someone using an old laptop as my home server, I'm VERY impressed by your skills and determination. You are amazing.

Which reminds me, I have a spare 250gig SSD I should install in my 500gig server.......

That's epic!

Questions for you:

• What material did you print it out of? (PLA, ABS, etc.)
• And have you had any trouble with warping or softening due to the heat generated by the laptop and/or hard drives?

I used PETG, and so far there is no warping/deformation. With PLA I would be a bit more worried, but PETG can stand some heat.

Was thinking about something similar until i saw the prices. Now i have snagged a used/cheap hp microserver and will use that as Backup server.