The Optiplex 9020 is quite a number of years old now, and many are beginning to come out of mainstream service. As with many of my projects, I like to re-purpose older hardware for new tasks.
In this case I want to add an SSD drive along with a standard spinning disk. I will be using a smaller 400gb SSD for the boot drive, and a larger 2tb HDD for my storage. The only problem is the Optiplex 9020 only has one SATA power connector in the small form factor.
Adding SATA power to Optiplex 9020
Before we begin I want to define the pin out of the SATA connector so you understand what’s going on. Also understand you can get the same result with a $7 splitter from amazon
SATA connectors are made up of 4 colors
- RED – 5V Rail
- YELLOW – 12V Rail
- ORANGE – 3.3V Rail
- BLACK – Ground
Begin the job
The first step is to pull the original SATA power wire from the Dell motherboard. This one wire also taps power for the internal DVD-ROM drive.
I clipped all the wires except the orange, stripped a bit of the insulation off 
them and tinned the tips with solder. Next I found an old SATA power connector and prepared it in the same fashion.
The next step was to solder all the wires together as shown and then finally insulate with electrical tape or your favorite heat shrink 
tubing.
Final thoughts
If you have a low profile hard drive you should be able to slide the ssd directly above it in the housing. In this configuration you can maintain both disks, plus the DVD drive. In my case the HDD was full height so I sacrificed the DVD drive in order to make room for the SSD.
The Optiplex power supply is more than capable of powering a HDD and SDD at the same time, so no worries about stressing out the system.
Lastly, as I said earlier if your handy and have the parts around this is a quick DIY project you can get done in under an hour, otherwise just buy the adapter from Amazon! – See below : SATA Splitter $7
Thank you for reading my blog,
Joe