DIY: Adding SSD or HDD storage using an optical bay caddy

[ProdigyPatel]

My Sony Vaio VPCEB2UFX stopped booting past the windows logo a while ago so I took it to Canada Computers and they told me that there was a problem with the HDD SATA connection on the motherboard side. Makes sense since repair disks, reformatting and reinstalling OS, and trying linux boots off CD and USB didn't work (all froze at a blank screen/OS logo after beginning to load).
So my question is, if the problem was due to the SATA connection directly at the HDD bay, would I be able to use this method as my primary (and only) HDD? If so, I'd like to give it a shot instead of just throwing out my laptop.

[Matinique]

I plan to use small SSD for swap file only in W7 64. Reason being that it is cheaper than 8GB DDR2 RAM.
How would hot swapping for optical drive look like in that case?

[bodyboarder]

Hey. So I installed a 2nd HDD onto my laptop and im using HDparm when I use the command hdparm -S 2 dev/hdb it does make the HDD go into standby after 10 seconds but once i shutdown and boot back up it stays in active/idle according to hdparm. I realize this is what the batch file is for but im a little unsure how to do this.

Also what does this part of it mean exactly, &REM set standby timeout=1min ?

Thanks.

[jackharvest]

Hey guys, I use This caddy and when it does the spindown to save battery life (DV6-6108us) I can't get it to spin back up and it ends up dismounting from My Computer.

This is problematic because all my multimedia files are on the HDD in the caddy. A working solution so far that I found was to increase the time before spindown to 99999 minutes, therefore canceling any potential spindown and keeping the drive mounted.

Pics Attached:

Before Spindown (Ignore Drive F


Power Settings for Spindown:


After Spindown (Settings changed to turn off HDD on battery after 1 minute):


Any thoughts on how I can get my HDD in my optical caddy to wake back up without a restart?

I'm also having this issue.

[baiii]

Don't know if other ask this before, but

Does Windows 7 turn off disk after x minute equals to hdparm standby?
The 2nd HDD is nice, but the spin sound sometimes drive me crazy (not accessed when I check taskmanger)~~

[sovking]

Hi I would like to replace ODD of DELL E6400 with a drive caddy.
What are at the moment the best option on the market ?

Thanks

[moe69]

hi there,

i bought a used hp 2530p and i also want to use a caddy with a ssd.

i got a 2.5" 90 gb ssd sata 2 (9.5mm) and want to use this drive with the caddy in my 2530p.
i read the caddy is bootable.
so is it possible to do a fresh installation of win 7 with this ssd-caddy?

i only want to use the 1.8" build in drive as secondary drive. i dont want to use it as primary, because it is too slow.

if i boot my notebook, do i always have to choose which drive i want to boot? (even if there is no win-system on the 1.8" drive?)

best wishes,

moe

[User Retired 2]

i got a 2.5" 90 gb ssd sata 2 (9.5mm) and want to use this drive with the caddy in my 2530p.
i read the caddy is bootable.
so is it possible to do a fresh installation of win 7 with this ssd-caddy?

i only want to use the 1.8" build in drive as secondary drive. i dont want to use it as primary, because it is too slow.

if i boot my notebook, do i always have to choose which drive i want to boot? (even if there is no win-system on the 1.8" drive?)

All you need to do to boot from the 2.5" SSD in your optical bay caddy is to set the boot order to be 1. Upgrade/optical bay 2. Harddrive. Details for this are in Configuring the Boot Order in the System BIOS HP EliteBook 2530p Notebook PC - HP Customer Care (United States - English) .

Yes, you can for a fresh install of Win7 with the ssd-caddy. Just create a USB-Win7 installation media as shown at Install Windows 7 From USB.

[moe69]

@nando4,

thank you very much!

[smilodon]

nope. most notebooks can just plug out the optical drive without issue. the dell at work even has a huge button just for that

but obviously, for hdd's, you need to first flush all caches to disk before taking it out, or it may result in a loss of data.

if you don't take it apart, how to do the hotswap between HDD and CD-ROM?
Is there any button on caddy you can push to pop the HDD out, and then put the CD-ROM in?