The weird part is that it came with this extra little metal plate and some screws... And I was sitting here for a few minutes trying to sus out what in the world this was for.

Cover for the bottom? Spacer? What the heck?

Wouldn't be the first time an ebay purchase comes with bonus random hardware that has nothing to do with the product, but right before I was going to chuck it the fact that two of the holes were threaded stuck out to me.

Then I finally turned it the right way and realized it's the most amazing mPCIe accessory I've ever seen.

It's an extension plate! There's two different lengths of mPCIe cards, and some sockets won't have mounting posts for both lengths, so this lets you turn this into a 51mm full size mPCIe card if you need to use it somewhere that doesn't support half size cards! 🤓

So unfortunately, it looks like there isn't enough clearance in the T620 case for this card's SATA connector and even a right angle connector.

@warthog9 tried to talk me into replacing the connector on the board with a right angle connector, but I like the idea of just soldering a pigtail onto the mPCIe card, because SATA is literally just two pieces of twinax for transmit and receive!

Yeah, so as reported online and expected, normal right angle SATA cables aren't even close to low enough to let us put the cover back on the case.

Good sanity check I'm making before doing the cursed is making sure everything works BEFORE I start cutting on it.

That way I can know I'm really the one who killed it when it stops working. 😈

The connector is too tall you say?

Well that's fine. Nothing a little hot air and a soldering iron can't fix. #xp

Now that we have a SATA cable, the next thing we need for a hard drive in here is a SATA power cable.

Luck would have it I have a spare SATA power cable laying around from a dead power supply.

And 2.5" SATA hard drives are nice in that despite the 15 pin connector having positions for 3.3V, 5V, and 12V, the only required voltage for 2.5" disks is 5V!

And there's an internal USB port I don't care about RIGHT THERE!

✅ SATA data
✅ SATA power

Now we need somewhere to mount the drive. 24 gauge sheet metal is wonderful; it's like the hot glue of the computer modding world.

I don't know if this was the original intention for the standoffs I'm using. It's sure exactly-the-right-size for it...