Agni: Unboxing

2013-02-10 2 min read Longer Tales Server Home Projects

Alright, so in my last post I managed to figure out what, exactly, Agni is. Now the next most pressing question is: How the heck do I get inside it? I’ve got the tech specs now, so I’m fairly confident what I expect to see once I do get in, but a cursory inspection reveals no screws of any kind. Stupid hidden screw techniques.

My husband managed to figure it out though:

2013-02-26 08.42.27That little piece with the lock slides to one side, causing the entire side panel to pop off. Voila! And we’re inside!

2013-02-26 08.43.46It’s nice and compact, though I like my cases roomier so I can add to them. Definitely not going to be able to fit multiple drives in there. Of note, there does appear to be an optical drive that I’d missed in my earlier rundown (they don’t come with one by default I guess), and… snicker… there’s a 3.5″ floppy drive… lol. Nice labeling on the cables though.

My first goal was to simply swap out the hard drive with the one I had on hand, already set up for web serving. Notice the tight space though: clearly you can’t slide the drive out of the bay like you would in a larger tower, not without removing the power supply. So how do you….

2013-02-26 08.45.05Oh! Those blue clips, when pressed together, cause the entire bay to undock, letting you lift the bay out and then swap the drive. Very clever, Dell. Very clever indeed.

(At work we have a system which actually has a bay open to the exterior of the machine, letting you simply flip some clips to disengaged and slide the drive entirely out without opening the case. I love that system. This is nice too though!)

2013-02-26 08.46.17Alright, now to slide the smaller but already configured drive in and…. uh-oh. Problem.

2013-02-26 08.47.32
Old drive on left, new on right

The old drive is… IDE, and the new is SATA. (The specs said something about slimline, but this doesn’t look slimeline, so I’m going to go with normal SATA) I clearly need an adapter Unless….. I do have other machines in the house… and while transfer via ethernet takes for friggan EVER, it is feasible. Hmm…. I’ll have to ponder this further.