HP t610: Using 

For some time I had been using my t610 running True NAS as the basis for a NAS on my local network. The storage was provided via an external USB 3.0 connected rack that took 4 x 512GB 3.5" drives - see the photo below. While working fine this contraption was a little noisy and prone to dust. Also the 4-6 year old 3.5" drives couldn't be considered to be the most reliable either. Reading here about what others had done inspired me to upgrade my t610 NAS system to one that would be quieter, more reliable and more compact. By using SSDs and NVMe drives I hoped to fit everything INTERNAL to the t610.

Looking at the internal connectivity available on the t610 we have:

• An IDE connector.
• Two SATA connectors.
• A mPCIe interface.
• A 4xPCIe slot.

Of these

• the IDE connector is old technology and uses bulky cabling and so I ignored it.
• one of the SATA ports is needed for the OS. In fact that fits nicely on the small 16GB SSD that came with the t610 so I used that.

So the viable options left were - the second SATA port, the mini-PCIe connector and the PCIe x4 slot.

So, I bought (dirt cheap):

a 90-deg PCIe 4x riser,

a SFF PCIe 4x to NVME converter board and

a mini PCIe-to-NVME adapter, but one that uses an interconnecting ribbon cable as that is much easier to fit in the case:

After installing the above my t610 now looks like this:

• WalRAM 512GB SSD attached to the upper SATA port
• Netac 1TB M.2 disk attached to the mini PCIe port through the ribbon cable
• for now - a spare M.2 disk slot provided by the riser/adapter pair. I've tested this and it works OK, so I plan to buy a second M.2 disk of at least 1TB capacity
• ...and the (now hidden below the blue SSD) - HP 16GB SSD with the NAS OS

Everything fits inside the t610 box perfectly without any power and/or heating issues.