Modificatins to a HP t620

In December 2019 I heard from Jerzol from Poland who had added a SATA drive to his t620. You can read about that here.

In January 2021 I heard from Max from Italy who had added a VGA port to his t620 Plus. You can read about that here.

In February 2021 I heard from Pawel from Poland who had installed two 2.5" SATA drives into his t620. You can read about that here.

In May 2022 I heard from Evan from the US who had fitted a 2.5" SSD to his t620. You can read about that here.

In October 2023 I heard from Marco who had fitted a second ethernet interface to his t620. You can read about that here.

Adding a SATA drive

With the later production versions of the t620 the mSATA socket is missing from the motherboard leaving the M.2 socket as the only way of providing mass storage. However the pads for the mSATA socket are still there on the motherboard and Jerzol's approach is to wire a SATA lead directly to them.

[In January 2022 Samir pointed me at a servethehome.com forum entry where the poster had carried out a similar mod but had (re)fitted the mSATA socket.]

The photo shows the mSATA socket solder pads on the t620 motherboard. As always with SATA connectors, if left off the board, the series capacitors in the data lines are also omitted.

Highlighted are the places where the four 10nF surface-mount capacitors have to be added and also the pads where the SATA data cable is to be soldered.

Other correspondents have told me they have used 0402 SMD capacitors for this. One provided the Mouser part #: 810-CGJ2B2X7R1C103K for a TDK part (CGJ2B2X7R1C103K050BA). (Mouser's website now suggests 810-CGJ2B3X7R1E104BB as an alternative).

mSATA pads		SATA cable
pin	signal	pin	signal
Keyway
17	Reserved
19	Reserved
21	GND	7	GND
23	R+	6	B+
25	R-	5	B-
27	GND	4	GND
29	GND
31	T-	3	A-
33	T+	2	A+
35	GND	1	GND
37	Reserved

The pads on the motherboard on the left and the make-up of the SATA cable on the right.

Here are the capacitors and the cable soldered in place.

Note the cable tie securing the cable to the board thus reducing any strain on the soldered connections.

Jerzol suggests picking up the +5V supply for the SATA disk (or SSD) from a fan connector or an internal USB port. Here you can see his particular choice.

Here's the completed project.

The BIOS reporting that it can see the standard flash drive (16GB) and the added 1TB SATA drive.