*HP 2510p Owners Lounge*

[User Retired 2]

INFO: The ebay sata-to-pata (Marvell) or pata caddies
Linked from INFO: Using a optical bay caddy to install a 2.5" SATA or PATA SSD/HDD

The correct substitute for the 2510P's optical drive is the $US13-shipped 9.5mm sata-to-pata caddy. It uses the Marvell 88SA8040 sata-to-pata chip, as used in the Lenovo ultrabay caddies with vendor informing me it weighs 100grams. A 2.5" drive weights 100grams, so 200grams total is very close to the 180grams of the original optical drive. This caddy has an additional 1W of power overhead for the sata-to-pata chip operation shown here confirmed by my testing. The equivalent US$18-delivered ebay 9.5mm pata caddy simply rewires the JAE50 connector to IDE40 with no bridge chip so has no power consumption overhead.

Revised US$20-shipped 9.5mm sata-to-pata caddy by Notebookelite with 'fenvi' label

Right: notebookelite's revised product with stronger metal chassis and swappable faceplate to one previously reviewed below.

Originally reviewed product


Caddy as it appears in the 2510P, requiring multibay plate to be removed. More pics in sfsilicon's gallery and here.

ebay caddy modifications

The ebay caddy can be modded to stiffen the faceplate, set master mode, and have HDD LED functionality on your system in addition to the little red LED on the caddy. 1: chassis mod for fit and hotswapping faceplate strength 2: circuit mod for Master operation and HDD system LED

1. Fitting the caddy. The JAE50 and metal guide side strip needs to be unscrewed as shown in sfsilicon's gallery. Initially the caddy got jammed and I needed to push it out with a screwdriver from behind the 1.8" HDD bay. Shaving off some plastic with a box cutter on the left edge as shown above allowed easy slide in/out.

2. Faceplate rigidity. The faceplate is secured using two screws, each part way in on either end. As it is flexible plastic, pulling the faceplate on the bottom left edge causes it to flex around the screwpoint. The way to correct this is to glue the faceplate down against the caddy edge so the pulling force is against the whole front chassis. Suggest placing masking tape on the faceplate to avoid spatter in the process.

3. Setting it to run as slave. The ebay caddy boots up as master by default though it is somewhat unusual since it cannot run as slave concurrently with the 1.8" ZIF PATA HDD as master. It simply disappears from the boot menu in that configuration. So really the only usefulness to 2510P owners is to make the ebay caddy run as Master by connecting pins 47 and 45 shown in close up detail here.The 1.8" Toshiba ZIF HDD was set to slave by bridging it's pin 1 and pin2 and confirmed works concurrently with the ebay caddy. Useful for cloning purposes, or as an additional storage repository if getting a 2.5" SATA SSD.

Late edition: can try to slave_mod the ebay caddy to run it as slave. This works with the topda branded ebay caddy.

4. HDD LED function. The caddy has a red HDD activity LED but the 2510P's HDD LED doesn't function along with it. A patch wire from JAE50 pin 37 (Drive Active) to the +ve terminal of the caddy's LED corrects this.

5. Pinning HDD down. 4 screws are provided to pin the HDD down under the side plastic tabs. The HDD simply slides in place and is held by the sata connector. If you are somewhat rough in your handling of your system you may consider a filler plastic plate to secure the HDD to prevent it from sliding forward. The 9.5mm ebay sata units have it, but this one doesn't. Better yet, consider drilling 2 or 4 bottom plate mounting holes as described here.

Performance/Installed photos see Comparison: ebay versus newmodeus 9.5mm sata-to-pata caddy.

[sfsilicon]

Thanks for the photos nando4. I was able to remove the multibay connector and expose the correct connector for the 2510p. Pushing in the caddy is a bit tough because of a metal bump on the top left of the 2510p dvd slot. With some force I was able to slide it in, but it makes a load snap when I slide it in. Once fully inserted it sits okay. The face plate is flush, but it lacks the bottom right angle to match the 2510p body there is also a ~5mm gap between the faceplate and the bottom edge of the 2510p case slot. It doesn't look great, but for now I'm using it to easily pull the caddy out. Hopefully when I remount the screw holders it will hold the caddy firmly in place.

On to testing the caddy. I'm going to try a 320GB WD Scorpio Black 2.5" SATA drive. It's a 7200rpm drive with 16mb cache. More later.

[sfsilicon]

I disconnected the 1.8" HDD and connected the caddy and it is being recognized as a multi-bay by the bios. After booting off a USB stick I'm in the process of installing XP. The format utility correctly seeing the 320GB drive so I'm optimistic that everything is good at this point.

I know installing from a USB stick causes XP to get confused with the drive letters and cause boot problems, but I've done this before so I'm hoping it won't be to much of a pain this time around.

BTW, can you send me a link to the benchmark software you use and any tests you would like me to run. My SSD comes on Tuesday so I'll swap that in later.

Concerning setting the 1.8 ZIF HDD to slave, I can tell from your picture what you did to jumper pin 1 and 2. I'm thinking of running just the caddy and getting rid for 1.8 HDD, so I'm not that interested in doing the jumpering unless it is easily reversible. Let me know if you really want to see this.

[sfsilicon]

I have XP installed, but I'm running into the same issue that I had when installing from a USB drive that the drive settings are mixed up in the boot.ini which is preventing me from booting straight into Windows with out the USB stick. It's getting late in CA so I'll continue this tomorrow. Night! Thanks for the links to the benchmark programs.

[sfsilicon]

Just a quick before and after battery comparison using the caddy. Measured using pocketgeke's battery status application.

1.8" ZIF HDD 4200 rpm -7.7
2.5" SATA HDD 7200rpm in caddy -8.1

Nothing scientific. My numbers are jumping around a bit depending on when the disk is being used or not. I'll try to get something more repeatable later, but I can hit -8.1 fairly regularly. I can still here a humming of the drive so I'm guessing the platters are still not parked at -8.1.

[sfsilicon]

Here are pictures of the caddy.

[sfsilicon]

Appears the ebay caddy is set to slave by default

Sorry this is not the case. When reactivating the 1.8" ZIF HDD only it is visible in the multiboot menu. I made screenshots of the bios menus here.

I also added benchmarks of the caddy and WD to the photo gallery. The ebay caddy seems to be a bit slower than the Newmodeus caddy. 82MB/s max vs. 84MB/s.

I should be getting my OCZ Vertex on Tuesday. I'll run the benchmarks again when I get it.

[pocket_geek]

I'm looking forward to those benchmarks... I just wish it wasn't so dang annoying carrying around an external DVD drive...

[sfsilicon]

Just finished my first attempt in hardwiring the notebookelite caddy to slave by isolating pin 47 with some tape. The tape sliver needs to be so thin so I am not sure how well it stayed in place after I pushed the caddy into the socket. At first I thought I was successful since I checked the Primary IDE channel under WinXP and saw that the caddy was working as Device 1 (vs 0). I reconnected the 1.8" ZIF HDD but after booting only the 1.8 HDD was visible in the bios. After booting into XP I again checked the Primary IDE channel and saw that the 1.8 ZIF is being displayed as Device 0 and no Device 1. I'll check and see if the tape moved and find a way to secure it better. It is also possible that isolating pin 47 doesn't work. Time will tell.

Update: I redid the tape and it stuck this time. That's the good news as can be seen here. The bad news is that things have not changed. The caddy is not visible when the 1.8 ZIF is connected. I removed the tape and confirmed in XP that the device is being seen as a slave (with or without taping pin 47).

[sfsilicon]

My OCZ Vertex 60GB arrived yesterday. I was quite busy so I barely was able install XP and do some benchmarks late last night. Here are the screenshots.

The results for reads are as expected. 78MB/s average in HDTune. 88MB/s in CrystalDiskMark. 82MB/s in Everest.

The writes are disappointing capping at around 31 MB/s. The disk was seal wrapped so I assumed it didn't need any whipping. I need to transfer the disk to my desktop to check the firmware revision and see the uncapped speeds with out the bridge chip. Any suggestion on how to improve writes or why they are so slow are appreciated.

I'm going to go back and do some more timed benchmarks against the WD Scorpio Black on real world things like Windows start-up and shutdown, etc. This might take sometime so don't expect any updates till later in the evening.

Ooops, I forgot to add the power consumption. I haven't installed all drivers yet. Just the Intel chipset / graphics and Wifi drivers. I'm getting around -7.8 to 8.1 drain while typing this.