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.

this is cursed and i love it

It’s beautiful.

Excellent hack.

In case you're a masochist like me and want a lot more work on your hands, then you could remove the whole laptop mobo and make its own case and make it more compact in the process.

I've done this recently to make a standalone machine out of a busted laptop. This can give you a single, more compact unit with all the parts inside. You can improve the cooling and noise too (by using desktop fans). You'll maintain your laptop resale value too by not destroying the case and being able to put the mobo back in place in the future. Infact, with today's ram prices, the reason I went down this route is because you can get broken laptops with soldered in DDR5 ram.

Part of me wonders what chipset is running that adapter, and if you'd get a better one if you went for a miniSAS adapter rather than individual sata ports (enterprise port generally implying a better controller chip)

Then realised there would probably be no use for such an adapter in enterprise so if you did get a different connector it would probably just be the same interface chip as whatever is in this.

Hows the hdd cooling situation?

I've gone this route! Anything with a busted screen is fair game to me, though I haven't picked up any recently, mostly just tiny/mini/micros (and heavy on the lenovo tiny).

But a custom hacked up laptop can be a great option especially with tight space to work with

Edit: I'm surprised I missed your original post! I did the same, though what I reused was first a lenovo tiny, more recently updated with a digital signage player I picked up that I swapped parts out on - way more fun than a standard console imo!

I've been pondering doing this to a broken iMac I've got.

It got donated to me by someone who needed to thin out his studio a bit, so it didn't cost me a penny. But I took the screen off to give it a clean out and repaste, apparently didn't tape it in place securely enough as a temporary measure, so the screen fell off. And smashed.

I did some swearing.

However, it's still a surprisingly handy spec. 3.5ghz i5, 24gb RAM and a Radeon GPU. So I've been wondering about pulling the guts and turning it into a desktop, then making it my home server to replace the 2014 Mac mini I currently use.

ponderings intensify

Maximum jank

Apropos! Has anyone extended their laptops memory by replacing its DVD drive?

My attempt failed when I bought a misgendered micro sata cable..

I've literally been considering exactly this for a media center. I already have a server built put of an old tower, but it's got limited specs and I don't want to bog down the other stuff running a gui and all that.

If you look carefully at the pictures, there are 80mm fans attached to the cage.

I thought about replacing the entire bottom part of the laptop, but then I looked at the screw layout and thought this is way too much effort for not much benefit. I am not lacking in rack space so I am okay with it being bulky.

😂

Oh true. And some gap between the disks? Or is it sufficient as is?

Watch this guy's video. He DIY restores a smashed iMac screen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7FStfdGjAwc

How does one even attach the sata ports to the computer?

The fact that there exists an m.2 x6 port SATA adapter is the wildest part to me.

Nice work! I'm considering a similar project and this looks like a good way to do it.

There’s a NINE PORT ONE! That’s bonkers!

I ripped out my old MacBook pro’s DVD burner and installed an SSD, now it has a 512GB SSD and a 1TB HDD!

I should install Linux on it…

i know a Bourgeois when i see one

What

Honestly I ran 8HDD without cooling in a janky tower (panels of) for years and no fan whatsoever. Are still fine in my new build.

How are powering them up.. Do you have a PSU behind the HDDs ?

Edit: never mind just saw the whole post

As the selfhosting gods intended

I used one for my server. I'm quite happy with it

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

[Thread #95 for this comm, first seen 3rd Sep 2026, 15:30]
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This is the type of stuff I love to see the most when it comes to PCs. This to me is far more impressive then someone with a standard case, with standard RGB fans, standard AIO RGB cooler...

This reminds me of stuff I did in college.

:)

I was also very happy to find out they exist, otherwise this whole thing would've been a no-starter.

Did you read the whole post? I thought I made clear what I did.

Yeah there is a gap between the disks.

Because they can afford hard disks? Lol

Modern problems require modern solutions.

But I do not have a separate NAS. I do have a laptop I want to use as a NAS.

I'm more irritated than I'd like to admit by the fact that there is no 12V to 6x SATA power converter going with that M.2 to 6x SATA adapter.

Also slightly bugging me, but I didn't find 6x SATA power. And my plan always was to use 4 drives.

Well, I just used a similar adapter in my tower to get more sata ports. M.2 is not just for laptops. Even my ancient mobo had a slot.

Nas is expensive and old laptop is free

This post is cursed.

Not because of the insane jank, of course. That's on brand for self host and I love it.

It is cursed because it has awakened something in me, and I can feel every old laptop in my vicinity trembling in fear.

Maximum respect!

Is the laptop cooling ok with the lid closed? Or do you crack it open when actually in use?

bro doesn't get it. A substantial subset of selfhosting is using old tired stuff to make new sweet stuff. The only new parts on my machines are nvme ssds for the OSes and plugs and wire adapters. Everything else is yanked from an ancient unit or bought from ebay for pennies on the dollar of new. My services are free and my machines were close.

Next step is to free the acer from it's physical bonds and screw the motherboard to the 3D printed stand.

so what kind of looks did you get when you booted that up in the public library? how long before either (a) the cool librarian asked you how you did it or (b) the jerk librarian asked you not to burn down the library

This can give you a single, more compact unit with all the parts inside.

what if i want a multiplex, larger unit with several parts outside? can this help me accomplish that too?

hold on, i'm sure we can find something with two similar sized wheels and MAKE it portable.

and you're eating well?