Dedicated Dell Optiplex

[farnk]

Hello,
I plan on purchasing a Dell Optiplex i7 3rd gen or higher PC from ebay. I see that most of them come with a small HD like 250GB or 500 GB with Windows 8 or higher. Of course I want larger HD (at least 2TB). So do I purchase an extra HD and make it a slave?

thanks
Frank

 

[Jagradang]

If this is the small factor or full size? Small factor doesn't have the option to have a slave hdd. Unless you remove the cd drive and replace it with a hdd at a slower speed.

 

[farnk]

If this is the small factor or full size? Small factor doesn't have the option to have a slave hdd. Unless you remove the cd drive and replace it with a hdd at a slower speed.

I plan on the one of the 2 largest form factor.

 

[NoloC]

Yup. I have a Dell 6700 SFF and removed the DVD so I could place a 256GB SSD in the slot for the OS. Then a 4TB purple for recording. Thanks to @looney2ns for a great post with pics on how to do this.
If you get a larger machine it will probably be easier since slots should be available. IIRC the HP machines had an additional internal slot.

Whatever you get be sure and do a clean Windows install. Makes a big difference.

 

[griffths]

Something else you might consider, albeit at a slightly higher price, is a newer gen Dell/HP system that you can install a M.2 SSD or NVME "drive" into. The Wiki says a 128Gb boot drive is all that is needed so I bought an OEM Samsung NVME drive for 30.00 on eBay and it has been running perfect alongside the 3.5 HDD