The 3rd drive (used as an OS backup, programs, and redundant data drive) in the old Win 10 Pro machine (Dell 3420) is a 500 GB NVME drive in the M.2 slot -- which slot apparently was not intended for a drive, just network stuff, but will function with a drive. I could never get the BIOS to "permanently" set it as the boot drive, though: If I powered down and then rebooted, the machine would revert back to the SATA SSD. I could shut down and reboot yet again, and go into BIOS to boot off the NVME, but I never could get the darn thing to "remember" to boot off the NVME automatically. So, if a Windows update ran when I wasn't watching, the restart would bump me back over to the SATA drive (and likely an update there, too.)
For a little while I actually had a funny graphic as my desktop image, when the Win 10 Pro machine would flip back to the SATA drive: The graphic "shouted":
"Warning: Your DRIVING is all wrong!!"
But, I decided the SATA drive was plenty fast anyway, so, I ended up using the NVME as noted above.
Once I figure out what to do with the old Win 10 Pro machine, which means I'll almost certainly not need the NVME drive in it any more, that drive will be freed up for possibilities such as you describe.
IF I can ever get to all this stuff!
Tomorrow I'm going to be on the lookout for a deal on a modest capability Win 11 Pro desktop for my wife, as her teaching job at a local parochial school requires many, many hours of computer work at home, mostly on Libre Office, and she needs something automatically that stays up to date on security. Then her present computer is likely (again if I can find time!) to end up with Linux on it.
Thanks for all the info. / assistance!
I am anxiously awaiting the start of Prime Days myself. I am hoping to find an “inexpensive” mini-PC with an APU with a neural processor along with an Octalink connector to use with a powerful GPU. I want to use this as a server for AI models, and some Flight Simulator use. This is mostly just for fun, but producing AI video using online providers gets expensive really fast. I spent about $200 last year on AI music, audio, image and video production. There are open-source AI models that can do the same thing for a few dollars of electricity. My gaming laptop is capable for most of this, but it is a serious power hog and not optimized for AI use.
In the lower price ranges mini-PCs with Ryzen processors are far more capable than the ones with Intel N90, N100, and N150 processors. This is largely because the integrated GPUs are much better.