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HP t620: Mods 

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 two SATA drives to a t620

In February 2021 I heard from Pawel from Poland who had fitted two SATA 2.5" drives inside a standard t620 (note: Not the Plus). These were connected to a cheap mPCIe-to-SATA converter fitted in the mPCIe socket that's intended for a WLAN card. You need to have reasonable soldering skills to attempt this project. Here are his comments on the process.

Foreword: The early versions of the t620 have a mSATA socket fitted to the board. With the later board you have the option of soldering one in as the traces are still there, but mSATA drives are expensive, and it's easier to use the mPCIe socket as described here.

These drives are invisible to the BIOS and only appear once an OS with suitable drivers has been loaded. (Should be the case with most OSs). You'll need to boot from either the M.2 flash or a USB flash drive.

Matters arising: In order to fit drives in the space available the plug connecting to the internal speaker has to be removed and about the top 1mm of the plastic latch on the board connector trimmed. If you wish to use the internal speaker you'll need to solder the wires direct to the PCB.

There is still room for the two memory SODIMMs but you will have to remove the metal shield that normally sits over them.

One key thing not to forget is that, by default, the mPCIe socket is disabled in two places in the BIOS. If after all your hard work you find nothing works remember this! You will find the entries in the devices menu and security menu.

HP t620 drive caddy
Mounting: For the mounting purpose I made a mounting plate in tinkercad and 3D printed it on a cheap printer. Depending on the print quality, it should fit tight on existing metal pins on the pcb. If not a 4.5mm drill can be used to open out the two middle holes and a 5mm drill for three side holes.

Theoretically mounting screws could be used to secure the mounting plate but that is not an easy option. Firstly the disks cover the holes that would be used, and secondly, it's hard to find such tiny screws with big heads/washers.

The STL file is available at thingverse

SATA power connector
Power: The 5V supply is taken from an internal USB connector. In my case it powered the two disks without any problems. I salvaged two SATA power connectors from old PC power supply and soldered these to the USB cable. A salvaged connector is likely to look like the photo (right). The orange wire (3.3V) and yellow wire (12V) can be cut off/ignored as can the (black) earth wire next to the 12V line. This leaves just the red (+5V) and GND (black) wires to connect to the USB cable.

Wiring mPCIe card
Data: The drives are connected to a cheap aliexpress ASM1061 mPCIe to SATA converter. Unfortunately the SATA sockets on this board were positioned in such a way that I would have to cut a hole in the cover to use them. To get round this I cut a SATA data cable in half and soldered the cut ends to the underside of the mPCIe-to-SATA adapter. At the same time I replaced the external plastic jacket by some clear heatshrink sleeving. This made the cable more flexible and easier to run. The soldering requires some delicate work but it can be done.

Wiring mPCIe card

However he subsequently found that the approach above had a high error rate which he and I put down to the pins in the sockets acting as 'stubs' and screwing up the transmission line characteristics of the cabling. The solution is to either to remove the sockets or to use modified plugs. Pawel took the latter approach as you you can see in the photo. (Not shown is the insulating tape to prevent the connections being shorted out by the metal cover).

Drives: I used a pair of 7mm drives. These end up flush with the casing, but I believe 9.5mm drives should also fit as the upper cover has a ~2.5mm recess inside it.

More Photos

HP t620 drive caddy in place

Here's the caddy in place. You can see the cutout on the left to accommodate the USB plug. At the top left you can see the RAM SODIMM and how close it is to the caddy and hence the need to leave the metal enclosure off.

 

HP t620 drives in the caddy
Here are the two drives fitted in the caddy. This is looking at the bottom. It will be turned over before dropping into the t620.

 

HP t620 fitted with two SATA drives

Here's the completed project. You can see the USB plug/cabling used to power the drives (top right) and the SATA data cabling from the mPCIe SATA controller (bottom left).

 


Any comments? email me. Added February 2021    Last update April 2021