Adding a drive to the Steam Machine

I wasn't going to mess with the hardware on the Steam Machine at all... I really wasn't.

However, my curiosity got the best of me.  So I decided to open it up and take a look inside.

With the beta hardware, it's incredibly easy to open things up.  I had to remove a single screw, then slide the outside of the case forwards and lift it off.  Super easy.

The inside is beautifully organized.  The graphics card takes up the entire left side, with a plastic cover that helps keep it in place and (more importantly) helps direct airflow for the card's cooling fan.  The hard drive is in a simple metal bracket.  There is room for a second 2.5" drive, and they've left a power and SATA connector there to tempt me.

Oh, all right.  So I put in a spare SSD and am typing this from an (unfinished) install of Windows 8.

The process was ridiculously easy.  Two screws to lift the drive cage, place the new drive on top of the old one, put the drive cage back down, and put the two screws back.

Here's a look at the inside, with my drive already installed:

And another look (you can see the ducts on the graphics card cover - front and back):

Windows 8 installed without any major trouble from a USB drive.

The only trick was making sure the Steam Box booted to Grub instead of straight to Windows.

This was done using these instructions from Arstechnica (the last bit is the important bit).

The network card isn't recognized, so it was useful to download the drivers in advance onto a flash drive.

I won't be using Windows 8 much (I still prefer 7, but 8 made UEFI boot very easy).  It's mostly here for comparison, and perhaps playing a few of the Windows-only games on this hardware.

As a last comment, I find the SteamOS interface to be more usable than Windows 8, barring the remaining bugs.