Dell R510 - Getting additional sata power

[acidrain]

Hopefully those that deal with these machines more regularly can give some assistance, or another fellow homelabber has done something similar.

Firstly not sure what the dell engineers were thinking but the motherboard has 6 sata ports but no way to power the devices. The only power is connected to the backplane.

So I have 2 SSD's, connecting to the onboard SATA, I want to run the OS on but I somehow need to power these SSD's (backplane is full).

The only options I have seen is to splice into the backplane power cable but can't find any how-to's or tap into the optical drive connector which weirdly only has a 2pin connector head into the backplane so would need some makeshift splitter of some sort?

Anyone successfully done something like the above or has advice?

Thanks

 

[Sinbad]

Is there a spare molex connector? Pretty sure you can get a molex to sata adapter.

 

[B-1]

 

[acidrain]

View attachment 1808073

This would work if there was an available power port to tap into. Below picture (showing backplane power connector) you can see the drive below has no space to accommodate this connector unless I leave the bay driveless.

View attachment 1808074

No molex connectors available.

Below is the power supply board which connects directly to the dual psu's.

Output on the board is only 3 connectors (can ignore the blue plug as that is a fan and is only 12V). These are the motherboard connector, 12V rail and the backplane power connector.



The below image shows the space between the drive and the backplane so there is no space to accomodate a splitter unless I sacrifice a drive bay.

The only plan I've seen people mention is to splice into the backplane connector.



I have a spare sata power cable from a modular PSU so will just disconnect the head connector and solder it into the backplane power. With a multimeter to confirm but my understanding is black=ground, red=5v, yellow=12v.

 

[B-1]

This would work if there was an available power port to tap into. Below picture (showing backplane power connector) you can see the drive below has no space to accommodate this connector unless I leave the bay driveless.

No molex connectors available.

Below is the power supply board which connects directly to the dual psu's.

Output on the board is only 3 connectors (can ignore the blue plug as that is a fan and is only 12V). These are the motherboard connector, 12V rail and the backplane power connector.

View attachment 1808121

The below image shows the space between the drive and the backplane so there is no space to accomodate a splitter unless I sacrifice a drive bay.

The only plan I've seen people mention is to splice into the backplane connector.

View attachment 1808123

I have a spare sata power cable from a modular PSU so will just disconnect the head connector and solder it into the backplane power. With a multimeter to confirm but my understanding is black=ground, red=5v, yellow=12v.

What connectors are on the other end of the harness? If you have a optical drive or there is a connector for the optical drive that would be my first choice. Next I'd go for the mother board connector.
If you buy one of the splitters I linked to you can make an extender from one of the above sources to the splitter.
Its hard to give suggestions on just photos though. Finding a good spot to splice in is the first step then making up the harness is not too hard.

 

[acidrain]

What connectors are on the other end of the harness? If you have a optical drive or there is a connector for the optical drive that would be my first choice. Next I'd go for the mother board connector.
If you buy one of the splitters I linked to you can make an extender from one of the above sources to the splitter.
Its hard to give suggestions on just photos though. Finding a good spot to splice in is the first step then making up the harness is not too hard.

I considered the optical drive but it's only got 2 outputs with small 2-pin header. I considered using that but my concern was whether there would be sufficient power delivery. The power connector was also only a 6pin whereas sata is a 15oin so just getting a splitter wouldn't fit obviously.

Have spliced into the backplane power. Just started up and all seems good.