Help With Adding 2nd HDD To ASUS N550JK w/Silverstone TSO9 Adapter?

[tackyjan]

Hello All,

I was hoping I could get some help installing a 2nd HDD in my ASUS N550JK laptop...

I purchased a Silverstone TS09 Caddy so that I could put the 2nd HDD in the optical drive bay. I wasn't exactly sure if it was the right one (specifically, whether I needed 12.7mm or 9mm) so I figured I would give this one a try.

When I took off the back of my laptop I unscrewed 4 screws to remove take out the optical drive. Here is a picture of what the optical drive looks like before being taken out:

And here are a few pictures of the caddy:

After putting the HDD in the caddy I tried to push the caddy into the slot where the optical drive was but it just did not seem to line up. I made sure that I was putting it in with the correct side up (the top in the picture goes against the laptop chassis) and that the connector was on the correct side.
I tried several times to push it in but I couldn't seem to get it to fit. I didn't want to force it so I gave up, assuming that I had purchased the wrong size.

Am I doing something blatantly wrong here? Does the entire optical drive get replaced by this caddy or am I supposed to remove something from the optical drive and then put the caddy in the drive itself and then put the drive back in?

Thank you,

Jan

 

[ronintexas]

Can you add a picture with the caddy in the laptop (just to see how it looks)?

 

[VincentP]

I'm not an expert on this.
Dell laptops have an optical bay with a button to pop them out and these can be replaced by batteries.
The caddy you have is very similar to the shape of these drive bay.
From the picture of your laptop, it doesn't look like the caddy will fit although it is hard to tell with the optical drive still there.
I'd be surprised if these is a standard for optical drives in all laptops. I would expect a caddy to be compatible with specific models only. Silverstone doesn't seem to have a compatibility list on their website though.

 

[kenrivers]

VincentP is correct, not all caddies are compatible with all laptops. The best bet is to find one for the specific model of your laptop. This caddie should work and this one.

Both are 9.5mm

 

[tackyjan]

Hello All!

I am sorry it's been a while but I have been reading your responses and now I am back.

To all of your questions/comments regarding wanting to see more, well I couldn't answer those because I had already put my laptop back together and I didn't want to take it apart again to take pictures, etc. until I have the correct part and I am ready to try the install again.

I have been doing some research online about these hard drive caddys for optical drives. Specifically for my ASUS N550JK laptop. I found one very good YouTube.com video here that shows a guy doing exactly what I was trying to do, only he wasn't using a caddy made by Silverstone it was made by hddcaddy.com.

Here is a quick summary of the video including pictures:

The first thing he did was install the HDD into the caddy.

Next he removed the single screw at the back of the optical drive enclosure and simply pulled the whole thing out. (Note that he did not have to remove the crossing bracket as I did. It's just that one screw in the back!)

He then took the caddy with the hard drive installed and simply replaced the entire optical drive that he removed with the caddy. He didn't have to take apart anything, or "borrow" parts from the optical drive, etc.

And finally here is a picture of the side of the laptop after the install. It's not a very good picture. I wish it were better because I can't tell what the face plate looks like.It sort of appears rounded (to match the contours of the laptop?) but I doubt that because I have seen other pictures of these caddys and they all have flat face plates that mimic what you would see on any optical drive face.

So the bottom line here is I needed to buy a 9 mm caddy so my first mistake was getting the wrong size. The next one I buy won't be from Silverstone again because they seem to be cheaply made (plastic) unlike the one in the video which is metal.

Jan

 

[tackyjan]

After a couple hours research I have narrowed my choice down to two different caddy manufacturers: hddcaddy.com and another brand I don't know the name of but comes up a lot when I find shops that sell caddys, for example at this online store.

Here are pictures of each one:

[hddcaddy.com]

[unknown brand]

Note that I could not find a picture showing the installed face plate of the one from hddcaddy.com but the other one I did.

Jan

 

[tackyjan]

I hate to keep dragging this one but I just discovered something I wanted to bring up here...

Look at the photos below of another type of caddy. It seems to be made by the same "unknown" manufacturer I mentioned above however the design is clearly different with respect to the face plate.

As you can see, when the face plate is not attached it appears that you can access the hard drive without having to remove the entire caddy.

I need to do more research to find out if this is another type of caddy design in addition to the enclosed type or if this only works for specific model laptops.

Jan