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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 a SATA SSD

In May 2022 I heard from Evan from the US who had fitted a 120GB SSD to his t620. He had the advantage that his t620 was an early model and so fitted with the mSATA socket.

He wrote:

I got my t620 for use as a server and obviously needed to expand its storage. There are various ways I could have gone about this - such as buying a larger mSATA or M.2 SSD - but since I had some 2.5" SATA SSDs lying around from a previous project I went with that.

mSATA to SATA adaptor

I bought a mSATA to SATA adapter board for $7.12 from Amazon.

I was able to power the drive by soldering a USB cable to the 5V/ground lines on a SATA power connector I scavenged from a ATX 4-pin to SATA power adapter. I felt comfortable doing this (and not using an adapter that can provide 3.3 and 12V as well) because the data sheet for the SSD I'm using indicated that only the 5V lines are used.

I'm lucky in that my t620 had the mSATA socket soldered on. I guess people without the mSATA slot could use something like the M.2 adapter shown below. ($13 from Amazon at the time of writing). It looks like this one has the advantage that +5V might be available from the on-board 4-pin connector. (As usual Amazon's detailed description is anything but).

M>2 to SATA adapter

In mounting the SSD I've used a bit of double sided tape to stick the SSD to two little posts near the bottom of the case as well as to the mSATA slot itself. This keeps the SSD from touching the motherboard, but still keeps it low enough that the cover fits. I also covered the exposed metal on the SSD case with polyamide tape to prevent short circuits in case it gets jostled loose.

The setup is shown in the photo below.

M>2 to SATA adapter