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What is the best cheap ($200 or less) box that can actually take a 2.5" or 3.5" hard drive?
The only option I've seen so far aside from building something from scratch is the newest, impossible to locate, Intel NUC, and thats pushing past $200.

I've toyed with the idea of an external HDD on a Pi, but that didn't work without a bulky one with external power or a seperate USB hub, and the Pi is a bit slow.

I also see soooooo many different ARM/Android setups like the Cubox, TLBB, etc. But none of the ones I've seen have any support for a SATA 2.5" hard drive inside. This will end up attached to a TV with no internet access whatsoever, so networked streaming is out of the question. The goal is basically to fill an entire ~500MB to ~1TB drive with content, update it somewhere WITH wifi occasionally, and then let it do its thing.

Any help would be really appreciated. I've been hunting around and could use some.

This is about as cheap as it gets and has a 2.5" bay. The C847 is a very decent chip way faster than anything Android. You'll just need 2GB of RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6856119083

(2014-03-17, 04:42)Dougie Fresh Wrote: [ -> ]This is about as cheap as it gets and has a 2.5" bay. The C847 is a very decent chip way faster than anything Android. You'll just need 2GB of RAM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6856119083

Hmm that actually looks pretty enticing. I can't remember why I was avoiding the C847 before... I thought I recalled reading how it couldn't push very high FPS in 1080p.
I don't need 3D or any network streaming, and I'd really like to just run OpenELEC if thats possible on this. A shame I can't find any sort of reviews or other users who've done it

I think the only question mark over the Celeron 847 is 1080/60i to 1080/60p de-interlacing (it copes with 1080/50i to 1080/50p AIUI). If you don't have Live TV as an issue it should be fine.

Regular 1080/24p (aka "1080p" in movie land) and 720p should be well within its reach, as should SD stuff. It's a great little CPU.

I ended up purchasing the system Dougie Fresh posted after doing more research. I have 2GB 1333mhz ram laying around and I got a western digital black 1TB drive to go with it. I have high hopes for this