Comments on: Best of both Worlds Part II: Installing the Optical Bay HDD Caddy

By: Austin

Austin — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 15:00:51 +0000

Pavol, Most notebook ODD connectors are only SATA not II or III this means using a solid state in its place wouldnt make much sense because the speeds will be bottleneck'd by the hardware. your best bet would be putting a SSD in the original drive spot and putting a HDD for access files that dont require fast speeds in your ODD spot.c

By: Pavol

Pavol — Sat, 26 Dec 2015 15:18:20 +0000

I just replaced my ODD with a SSD, clean installed Windows 10 and for some reason the boot of the system takes a stupidly long time. More than 5 minutes! I dont know what to do.

By: ae emm

ae emm — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 21:11:10 +0000

Samsung 840 EVO. SSD+HDD, SSD=main slot w/Win7 OS, HDD in caddy w/user Data. Worked fine for first 4 weeks, then HDD in caddy begin to fade out. Frequently got D: drive missing. The Disk Manager would not see neither volume nor physical disc. Even if disk show up occasionally, then copying many files in a row would make the disk disappear. Maybe caddy was of poor quality and got hardware failure within first month of use or then it was the HDD that had defects. The HDD heating was one concern for me as the optical bay is not ventilated. Not surif it shortens the life of the HDD. Supposedly the HDD will operate cooler because work is split between SSD and HDD

By: nhinkle

nhinkle — Sun, 17 Nov 2013 01:56:01 +0000

Hi fobissss - sorry, I didn't see your comment until now. It's definitely better to put the SSD where the original HDD bay is in the computer. This is generally better for performance and easier to configure in terms of selecting a boot device. Also your internal HDD bay is more likely to have SATA III whereas an optical bay caddy will probably be on SATA II, so you'll get better performance with the SSD on the inside.

By: fobissss

fobissss — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 08:44:10 +0000

Hi, I hope it-s not too late to make questions on this topic, but at the moment I'm considering the caddy solution to install a Samsung 840 EVO SSD (in discount at the moment on Amazon) on my Acer Aspire 4830TG (purchased in October 2011). What is still not clear is if it's better to install the ssd in place of the hdd and put the latter in the caddy, or install the SSD in the caddy (which seems simpler), i.e. what are the advantages and disadvantages of both solutions. Thanks

By: anon

anon — Fri, 05 Jul 2013 04:22:05 +0000

This is a good about overheating I hope he responds!

By: pmoody

pmoody — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 11:43:56 +0000

Hi All. Has anyone had an issue with when you have replaced the hdd into the laptop with an ssd and put the hdd in a caddy the laptop only seem to boot to the hdd in the caddy(so Port 0) and not the ssd. Bios setting are set to Notebook hard drive first and not cd drive?

By: Simon

Simon — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 18:18:09 +0000

I tried the same on my DM4, but..

With just the SSD the computer boots very fast. When I put the mechanical drive in the caddy it takes 10 min to boot. Tthe mechanical drive does show in "my computer" but not with capacity and the computer freezes when I try to open the drive.

I tried to limit the speed to 1.5 gb with a jumper without success.

I also tired to put the SSD in the caddy and it shows up in "my computer" with capacity and sometimes I can see the files but other times the computer freezes.

Any ideas / suggestions ?

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 19:08:47 +0000

Thank you for the guide nhinkle!

Just upgraded to SSD and my system now flies! I would not have been so quick to jump into the upgrade if it wasn't for this guide. BTW the new caddy by newmodeUS has holes that fit the CD faceplate perfectly (HP dm4-2070us: they have other models too). No duct tape needed.

Again, thanks for the guide. Nick

By: koysor

koysor — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:54:41 +0000

Hi there,

If you install the original HDD in optical bay and SSD in HD bay, would this make the laptop over heat due to no fan cooling the original HD in optical bay? Even if you put power settings low for optical bay HDD, would the HD still heat up and where would that heat be dissipated to, or is there holes for the heat to escape. Also when you press the eject button of optical bay, does it just eject as usual?

I have a Dell XPS l501x, if i put a SSD in optical bay to boot OS, would i gain SATA III speeds as original HDD bay or would it be reduced.

What i dont understand is, when browsing the net or downloading files, wouldnt the HDD in optical bay saving those files and spinning continuously caching data from browser etc... and generating heat? I had overheating problems with my last laptop.