Anybody replaced optical drive with 2nd HDD?

m3csl2004 · 16 Mar 2012 at 11:17

I'm interested to see/discuss the results of anybody replacing the optical drive bay in their laptop with a caddy, and fitting a 2nd HDD/SSD?

What caddy did you use?

Any difficulties with BIOS/settings?

Any performance issues?

Disco Boy · 16 Mar 2012 at 11:59

Isn't it fairly model dependent?

jamesfreddie · 18 Mar 2012 at 15:56

Does your laptop have a SATA dvd drive or ide?

5tephen · 19 Mar 2012 at 11:22

m3csl2004 said:
I'm interested to see/discuss the results of anybody replacing the optical drive bay in their laptop with a caddy, and fitting a 2nd HDD/SSD?

What caddy did you use?

Any difficulties with BIOS/settings?

Any performance issues?

My Dell Latitude E6520 has this, I configured it when placing the order, the primary disk is a Samsung SSD and I specified a secondary hard disk to be installed in the media bay. I then just bought an adapter cable from america that connects the DVD drive to the ESATA/USB combo port in the laptop. It works because I've used the DVD drive a total of two times in the last 5 months of having the laptop.
There wouldn't be any BIOS setting changes required if installing it afterwards - after all, it's just another SATA port that it's connecting to, I'm pretty sure.

spaceman · 19 Mar 2012 at 13:30

m3csl2004 said:
I'm interested to see/discuss the results of anybody replacing the optical drive bay in their laptop with a caddy, and fitting a 2nd HDD/SSD?

What caddy did you use? ebay special

Any difficulties with BIOS/settings? no

Any performance issues? no

yes, i added a 2nd HDD in my work fujitsu S7110 a few years ago.

paradigm · 19 Mar 2012 at 14:52

I've got a 2nd HDD in my XPS 15z. Only downside is the slot for the slot loader is still there (for obvious reasons).

Saundie · 19 Mar 2012 at 16:45

I have a NewmodeUS caddy in my Latitude E6400 with a 500GB SATA drive in it. It performs just as well as it did when it was connected via the normal SATA bay. They sell caddies for a variety of makes and models, and are pretty quick with shipping. I'm fairly certain it's safe to post the link to their site as there are no products on there that OcUK also sell.

m3csl2004 · 19 Mar 2012 at 20:00

I've order a few cheap Chinese efforts in the hope that they may well do the job - for the price I paid it is no disaster if they don't.

Will be great if I can use an SSD boot drive and my current 640GB optical drive as storage.

ThePirateHulk · 20 Mar 2012 at 05:22

I did it on my Lenovo IdeaPad Y560P. I just bought a cheap caddy from an american seller on the bay and replaced the facia with the one from my optical drive so it's completely unnoticable.

Performace has been fine. I haven't noticed any difference and I didn't need to change anything in the BIOS> It's the perfect path if you want to run an SSD as your boot drive without comprimising on HDD capacity.

I don't miss the optical drive one single bit. A 120GB SSD and 750GB HDD trump any optical drive which is used once every few weeks.

Ben Cole · 20 Mar 2012 at 06:14

Did it on my Macbook because the primary drive was a small SSD and I hardly used the DVD.

Found the battery life suffered badly even though it was set to sleep when not in use, ended up swapping back. Will probaby just buy a bigger SSD soon, 60Gb is enough for Lion but i want to dual boot with windows.