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Installing a 2.5″ SSD in a 3.5″ Dell Drive Caddy

May 15, 2014 by Paulie 3 Comments

I was playing around with a new Dell Poweredge R320 and I decided to see if it would be possible to attach at 2.5″ SSD drive using a 3.5″ drive carrier without having to purchase the 3.5″ to 2.5″ converter kit from Dell.

It is actually very easy and I can only assume the adapter kit provides some extra fastening points to make the SSD more secure. Given that an SSD has no vibration whatsoever I think the two screws used to hole the drive in should be fine, has been so far.

Here is the standard 3.5 SATA Drive tray with a 2Tb Western Digital RE in place:

Western Digital 2Tb RE Drive in a 3.5" Dell Drive Caddy

After removing the Western Digital Drive I installed the Intel DC 3500 240Gb SSD into the drive caddy, as you can see the SATA data and power connections end up in exactly the same place as on a full size 3.5″ drive:

Intel SSD DC 3500 Series 240Gb in a Dell 3.5" Drive Caddy

The SSD required smaller screws than the hard drive, but luckily I had some of those lying around anyway. Even though the SSD is only attached to the drive tray with the two screws visible in the photo, it was still secure and by the time it is pushed into the server SATA connector, it is not going to be going anywhere.

This SSD was connected to a R320 with a PERC H710 512Mb raid controller and worked beautifully.

Filed Under: Technical Posts Tagged With: Dell PowerEdge

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Comments

  1. Frank says

    August 17, 2020 at 5:00 am

    This is awesome! Thanks for sharing!

  2. 7yl4r says

    May 21, 2021 at 4:47 pm

    I’ve tried this but sometimes the SATA connector doesn’t line up properly because the SSD pops up on one side. Have you had this issue?

  3. Paulie says

    May 21, 2021 at 4:48 pm

    I’ve not experienced this. I’m not sure what you mean by the SSD pops up on one side. It lays flat in the caddy right?

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