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today I'll be doing a quick guide this is the ASUS TS mini which I unboxed a

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little while back it's a home server unit from ASUS it accepts two hard

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drives but the one that I have comes by default with one 500 gig drive so this

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is going to be a drive or well drive drive installation or storage upgrade

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tip today so we're going to start by removing the casing so I just undo these

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two thumb screws at the back here one

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and two the whole process is quite simple I've already scoped it out even

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though I haven't actually installed a drive in it just yet the case slides off

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just like well it slides off just

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like this okay so you just get a good grip on it there slide it

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off all right from here you need to remove only three screws and it would

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really help if I had the right bit in my screwdriver here so I'm just going to

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dump the bits out put in my slot head there we go so

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just do this one up

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here they are magnetic screws which is good news because I also have a magnetic

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screwdriver so that makes it easier to keep track of them once you've taken

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them out remve the second one and then the third one is down here and then you

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actually slide out almost the entire internal guts of the TS mini now the

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reason that I am doing a hard drive installation video before I actually do

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any tips about Home Server or the TS mini itself is that home server is not

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terribly useful unless you've got multiple hard drives because a big I

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mean there's a bunch of stuff it does but it's from my perspective it doesn't

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really matter if you uh if you don't have the data security that it can also

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provide for you so here I have a hard drive this is a 500 gig drive to go with

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the 500 gig drive that is already installed in the TS mini and um so you

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just grab your accessory box which I happen to conveniently have here there's

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my user's guide there's a bunch of other stuff and here are the screws that I

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will use to install this drive so just put those there oh okay these are uh

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slot as well I had just kind of assumed that they would be Philips head since

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I've seen very very few hard drives in my time that are mounted with uh slot

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head screws so there you go you see something new every day so sload screws

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are not really my favorite they're a little

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harder to maneuver into place than Philips head so bear with me here while

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I try to do this with a camera strap to my chest you got to put six of these on

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or at least four so this may take a

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while there we go I got one although

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it's not in all the way yet so hard to line up always slips out of the way I

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don't know how people do it like there's entire industries that seem to use

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nothing but slote head screwdriver or screw screws it's a pretty useless

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standard if you ask me there's nothing that you can do with a slot that you can't do with a Robertson or a Phillips

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I mean I guess if you need a whole ton of torque then slot head's probably the

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only way to go but I can't think of all that many applications where you need

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that much torque okay I'm just going to have to

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like turn this off for a bit and struggle with this off

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camera all right I got it that really wasn't that hard when I'm not trying to

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hold the camera at the same time so I made it look very difficult but it isn't

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so then all you do is you slide the drive in you see there is a SATA back

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plane there which runs off a PCI Express 1X interface right here and I'll show

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you how that fits into the TS mini itself but basically all you do is line

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up these screws with the rails that are in there and then drop it in so this

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lever right here lifts up if you want to take the drive out and then it just

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lifts itself up and then locks right into place when you screw the when you

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uh Slide the drive in so now I have two hard drives plugged into this uh this

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back plane here and I'm ready to put it back in but I wanted to give you guys a

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look at the inside of the TS mini one of the things to note about the TS mini is

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there are not any warranty void if removed stickers when you take the thing

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apart so it is designed to be opened up by an end user and have a hardware

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installed in it so that's really good so here's a custom motherboard this is the

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ASUS TS mini MD WS so I guess that's

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their workstation series and uh we've got our Atom Processor here a chipset we

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have a PCIe 1x interface that I mentioned before and then we have a

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whole lot of connectivity here on the back so we've got all six of those USB

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ports two e sat ports oh that's

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interesting huh well I'll be look at that the TS

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mini has a VGA port but it's not

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accessible from the back so I I hold on

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a minute we are discovering things

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today so let me see there's uh I see

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there's got to be a way to remove this uh this back plastic piece so here okay

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we're we're getting sidetracked today I'm apologizing in advance for that but

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it's something that has to be done we're going to go ahead and remove these These

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are Philips head yay so that'll go much faster see look I can do Philips head

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with a C strap to myself all day all right so one two three three of

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those and let's see what happens if we take this off do we get access to that

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VGA port does the whole thing Slide the

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whole thing slides off and we still don't have access to the VGA port okay

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well maybe there's uh some other trick involved here that I am that is not

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readily apparent to me

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let me just

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see oh I see there are more

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screws somewhere but I don't see how those help us let's see what happens if

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we push on this push this thing no no

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that doesn't help interesting so I I I guess in theory you could you could cut

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this away and get access to it but I yeah the plastic is thin over top of

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where the VGA port is but you can't actually get at it oh that's so

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interesting okay well I guess if you were desperate if you absolutely needed

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to get access to the Home Server from uh from like a physical display then then

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that would work but I mean it is meant to be managed completely remotely anyway

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so it's not like it would be a concern for

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99.99% of situations but uh there you

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have it if you were really that desperate you could just rip this open

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and you could plug in a VGA port yeah you can hear that so this black thing is

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probably almost just a sticker you can see it sticking onto the port

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there behind it huh interesting okay well anyway so when you slide

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the now full of drives enclosure thing

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back in you just line up the PCIe

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interface with the PCIe slot inside like this and then you just slide that in so

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it only goes in one way there you go then you put your three screws back and

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these are slot again so we'll see how

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this goes I actually found it was a little bit easier to thread them in by hand because they do have ridges on the

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edges of them and then tighten them with the screwdriver so that might be the

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strategy that we use here so yeah anyway without the

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redundancy feature where it uh automatically backs up your data I don't

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believe Home Server is all that useful so pretty much the first thing you

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should do if you're not buying a home server unit that already has two hard

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drives in it is you should probably grab another hard drive for it I mean hard

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drives are so cheap these days it's hardly even uh it's hardly even a factor

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when you consider the data security that's at uh that's at stake so there

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you have it that is how to upgrade your hard drive in the assus TS mini oh I

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didn't even notice this look at this this is actually see-through you can see

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my hand through so it's not actually solid black I had no idea we are

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learning all kinds of things on my video blog today the unit gets quite a bit

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heavier once you've installed an additional hard drive in it as well so

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thank you for checking out my guide on

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upgrading the assus TS mini Home Server

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to include a second hard drive