I recently bought an Optiplex 780 Mini-Tower with Windows 7 from DellRefurbished.com and am happy with the machine. I now want to add a second SATA hard drive I purchased, for which a power connector is available in the machine (The existing hard drive is 250G and so is the second one I want to install.)
However, both SATA cable ports on the motherboard are in use, one for the existing drive and the other for the CD-DVD drive. I understand that there cannot be a splitter for a SATA data cable (as there used to be two connections on some IDE ribbon cables).
According to Belarc Advisor, the board is Dell 0C27VV A03. Is there a way to install a second hard drive using a USB-to-SATA cable for either the CD-DVD drive or the second hard drive? If so,would I install a PCI USB card adapter with an internal USB connection? (I have several slots open.) Or is there already a USB connection on the motherboard?
Any advice,including suggestions about what parts I need to get, is appreciated. I see I can buy a USB-to-SATA cable that has two USB connectors and two sets of pins connecting to the hard drive. I presume one of the USB connections is for the power to the drive. I would not need that, because the power connection is already there and besides I wonder if I can get two USB connections inside the case with a PCI card. Is there a USB-to-SATA cable available with only the data connection to the drive?