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I bought a refurbished Lenovo M720s computer last summer to use as a homelab at my house. I loaded True Nas onto the internal SSD and swapped out the HDD drive that came with it for a 10tb drive. I also threw a 500gb drive in the M.2 slot to use for applications with True Nas.

All has been fine up to now. Recently though I aquired a 8tb HDD for cheap and figured I would throw it into the homelab for some extra storage. There was a extra Sata connector free on the motherboard anyway. I put in the drive and connect it, but then I realize that there is not another Sata power connector I can use for this drive. This computer makes you connect power to the drives from the motherboard and not the power supply.

So I am at a bit of a roadblock. I know I am pushing the capabilities of this little machine, but it seems silly that they give you 3 Sata ports but only 2 power ports for Sata drives. I guess they were probably intending for one of those ports to just be used for a DVD drive.

I went to a local computer store and they were not very helpful. I asked if I could use a splitter for the power port and they said I would fry my board.

Anyone know any solutions to this? I just need a way to power one more HDD. I will link the manual to the computer so it is easier to see what I am looking at.

Link

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https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkCentre-A-E-M-S-Series/adding-hdd-to-M720s-power-connector/m-p/4377028

Seems to be the way, this thread on the Lenovo forum supports your idea.

There is also a guy on the german mydealz forum, who is running 2 HDDs on one power connector and it seems to work for him (account required to read): https://www.mydealz.de/deals/lenovo-thinkcentre-m720s-sff-office-pc-intel-i3-8100-8gb-ram-aufrustbar-256gb-ssd-window-11-pro-hdmi-usb-c-refurbished-office-pc-2535136