Install A Hard Drive Or SSD In Your Notebook's Optical Bay

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erikstarcher

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[citation][nom]A Bad Day[/nom]Sadly, this isn't an option for laptops that don't come with an OS-reinstall disc and the hidden partition will not allow you to chose which drive you want the OS reinstalled in, such as the N61Jq.[/citation]
Just in case you didn't know, every laptop comes with a utility to make recovery disks. Make your disks now before your hard drive dies and you are s.o.l. Once the disks are made, you can do this.
 

mrkdilkington

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[citation][nom]lespy[/nom]some benchmarks on the caddy SSD would have made this article very good.[/citation]Also battery life benchmarks.
 

nbelote

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I did just this on my own N61JQ. I happened upon a Win7 Home Premium OEM disc, downloaded it, and installed it on the SSD using the license key that came with the laptop. Almost a year ago. I'm surprised this took so long to make it here.
 

shadamus

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I've done this to my last two laptops using Samsung SSDs and the adapters from NewModeUS.com If you don't find one at NewModeUS for your laptop model, send them an e-mail... They likely have one that will work for your laptop, but may not have a mounting bracket to move-over the decorative cover from your ODD (I had this issue with my HP DM4, but my ASUS N53SV-XV1 was good to go with one of their off-the-shelf solutions for about $45).
 

warezme

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Alienware used to do this with the previous generation models C2D's. You can swap the bay with either a BD/DVD Drive, a 6-Cell battery or another HD Drive. It was called a smartbay. I still have an older m15x with a BD/Drive and 6volt battery bay that I turned into a media machine after I bought a new model.
 

B16CXHatch

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I was reading this thinking "hey, awesome idea. Maybe I should do th... wait". Then I remembered, my laptop has a second 2.5" HDD/SSD bay. BUT, if I get another laptop without a second bay, then I'd totally do this.
 
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Most notebooks use standard-sized SATA DVDs/BDs, 12.7mm height, just do a search on eBay for sata caddy 12.7 and you have ~200 options. They have both SATA and PATA versions, be careful. All come without the panel.
But panels on most DVDs are simple custom panels fit to the standard-sized DVD, the holes are standard, technically you can switch the original plastic panel from your DVD to this new caddy.
I've put a 640GB drive exactly last January on this VAIO F (cause in the main bay I've put a Corsair Force 120), the cost was ~17 at that time.
 

cobra5000

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What a waste of time, are you really going to take out your optical drive just so you can put an overpriced SSD in there? Backwards thinking, at best. If you need it that bad, just put an SSD where it belongs. In the HDD slot. Or buy a new one, its a laptop for crying out loud. Disposable junk. If you want to upgrade, get a desktop and save hundreds of dollars all while doubling your performance!
 
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How do I prevent the newly inserted disk to be automatically ejected at sleep/wakeup event?
 

killerb255

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[citation][nom]cobra5000[/nom]What a waste of time, are you really going to take out your optical drive just so you can put an overpriced SSD in there? Backwards thinking, at best. If you need it that bad, just put an SSD where it belongs. In the HDD slot. Or buy a new one, its a laptop for crying out loud. Disposable junk. If you want to upgrade, get a desktop and save hundreds of dollars all while doubling your performance![/citation]

Didn't read the article, did ya?

You put the SSD in the HDD slot, and your mechanical HDD in the OptiBayHD caddy.
 
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if you need to use an optical drive on the Dell D-series and want to keep the OEM look, you could install it in a "D-bay" which plugs into their proprietary USB plus power socket (on the left of the D630), without having to remove the newly-moved HDD ... no external power needed. Or you could get a USB DVDRW drive - which are cheap enough nowadays ...
 

actionjksn

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Why are they letting people think they have to spend anywhere close to 68+ dollars to buy a hard drive caddy. These things can be had for a fraction of that price. Which would leave more money for the purchase of a better SSD. Lets see super expensive hard drive caddy, or much better or bigger SSD. Sounds like an easy choice to me. I'm planning to do this with my Thinkpad T410 after SSD's come down a little bit more. They need to be quite a bit cheaper for me to justify that purchase. They are taking a lot longer to come down than I thought. When I can get a 64 gig model for somewhere close to 60 bucks then I'm on it. Right now my laptop has a good sized 7200 rpm unit and runs pretty good with 8 gigs of ram which only cost 35 bucks for Gskill. I remember when RAM was outrageously priced too.
 

killerb255

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Update:

I purchased the one from NewModeUS, and I store VirtualBox virtual machines on a Samsung Spinpoint 1 TB hard drive, which is installed in the caddy. It is DOG ASS slow compared to putting the drive in a USB 2.0 external enclosure!

I will try another caddy (probably the OptiBay in this article, even if it's overpriced) to see if the problem is the enclosure or the fact that the optical drive bay on these Dells use a VERY SLOW IDE or SATA 1.5Gb bus...
 

bkeast74

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I just put a 60g SSD in my laptops optical drive bay, should I have put the original 260g Harddrive in the optical drive bay and the SSD in it's place? If so why?
 

jakey1995abc

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Will this work for the Samsung np355v5c-s01uk laptop and does anyone know how to take out the optical drive as there is no screw for it underneath the laptop, please respond. thanks in advance.
 
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