Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Storage > Internal Storage > Install A Hard Drive Or SSD In Your Notebook's Optical Bay

Step 3: Replace The Optical Drive With The OptiBayHD Caddy

05:10 - Thursday 26 January 2012 by Manuel Masiero, Achim Roos

After installing Windows on the SSD, the notebook is almost ready to use again. But we still have to put the hard drive-equipped caddy into the optical drive bay, where it will serve as a storage device for bulk data.

7. After removing a single screw, the optical drive of the Dell Latitude D630 can be pulled out easily:

Matching size: The OptiBayHD caddy (top) and the optical drive of the Dell notebook (bottom).

8. After inserting and securing the OptiBayHD caddy, your notebook is good to go. Who would guess that there is now a hard disk behind the side panel?

Conclusion

The OptiBayHD caddy represents an easy to way to upgrade a notebook with an SSD without having to pick solid-state or mechanical storage. By using the two technologies in parallel, you're able to enjoy the best of both worlds.

But what about the optical drive? Increasingly, they're only used to install software or, occasionally, play a game from. You're pretty safe getting everything loaded and then swapping it out. And because the caddy simply slides in in place of the optical drive, it's easy enough to swap back in case you need to load an app or want to watch a Blu-ray movie. That's one good reason to install the SSD internally and leave your user data on a hard drive in the caddy; even if you pull it out, you're still able to boot and run your most important applications.

At about $68 (plus international shipping) the caddy isn't exactly cheap. However, you might find it worthwhile, especially as SSDs come down in price. Cheaper 64 GB drives start in the £60 range, and those numbers are sure to drop as lithography advances and density increases. We used Samsung's 830, but any 2.5" drive will work for this project.

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fjiekie 26/01/2012 09:26

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you can always use a external optical drive if you dont want the hassle of swapping the bay...

Major_Trouble 26/01/2012 13:47

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Hmm installing a high GB game is going to be an issue if installing from a CD/DVD unless you have it external. You won't want to suck up your precious SSD disk space. Just another reason to go and download them from Steam and the like I suppose.

You could always just go the Momentus XT route (2nd gen - 8gb cache) like I did. Addmitedly it not as fast as an SSD but still a big improvement over a standard 2.5" drive, specially at boot time and with common tasks. That only cost me £135 for 750gb and I keep my blueray drive handy. This caddy way is £120 for the 120gb SSD plus £68 for the drive caddy if you switch out your now old, slow and probably small internal HDD.

If you don't use your optical drive at all I could see it being worth it for the all in speed advantage but if you still use the drive occasionally it would be an expensive PITA.

I just wish manufacturers would put out more laptops with 2 x HDD bays for the obvious benefits it brings.

das_stig 26/01/2012 14:38

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Any performance loss from running hdd from optical connnection?
Although th heat generated from hdd in caddy isn't great, where does it go?
Cheaper to use an external hdd eSATA or USB3 caddy?

bobwya 26/01/2012 23:06

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Hmm. What a coincidence I've just received a HDD/SSD bay from NewMode Electronics. This article would have helped me more if it had been put up a week ago!! :-)

bobwya 26/01/2012 23:35

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Should say I am glad I went with NewMode Electronics. International delivery to the UK (from the US) was like 2 days - wow!! Build quality (all Aluminum) for the bay cannot be faulted - near perfect IMHO!

dizzy_davidh 27/01/2012 03:22

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I did the optical bay -> HDD bay upgrade sometime ago adding an addition 1TB drive to my XPS M1730 laptop, having purchased a bay device to match my specific model and interface needs from a reputable seller on eBay.

I used an SSD instead of a HDD but the principal is of course the same. Using an SSD could be benenficial for reducing load times but for most older systems you won't get the real performance of the drive because of the interface you are connecting\converting through, which in a lot of cases (no pun intended) is going to be an older PATA interface or low end of the scale SATA rather than the faster type of direct to controller SATA connection you'll probably find your latptop's internal HDD bay is using.

As for the heat and lack of optical drive concerns;

With my laptop it is really a desktop replacement and has such a fantastic cooling system (something quite well acknowledged for the high-end Dell XPSs of old) that I just don't notice the extra heat. An SSD wouldn't hardly generate any heat so shouldn't realistically be a problem if you make that choice but bare in mind that the caddy bay devices themselves are usually made of alluminium and the drive you install is screwed directly to it and the caddy acts as a giant heat sink.

When it comes to the lack of optical drive access, who cares! I have loaded an OS, piece of software, audio\video disc on my machine in years and so I really dont' miss it. The HDD bay I bought is removable (but not hot-swappable) so if the time came that I really needed to re-insert a DVDR etc I could but that wouldn't be an option of course if I had decided to install my OS on the bays devices drive.

dizzy_davidh 27/01/2012 03:27

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dizzy_davidh :
I did the optical bay -> HDD bay upgrade sometime ago adding an addition 1TB drive to my XPS M1730 laptop...

I failed to mention that with my upgrade I also swapped in some 1TB drives to the standard SATA HDD bays, enabled the Intel on-board RAID and so I now have a 2TB RAID0 array plus the 1TB of the caddy conversion meaning I now have a whopping 3TB of storage in laptop.

wild9 27/01/2012 14:36

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Fjiekie :
you can always use a external optical drive if you dont want the hassle of swapping the bay...

Or mount an ISO image of the CD/DVD. The operating system recognizes the image as a real disk.

This procedure cuts down on power usage, wear and tear of the disk and drive mechanism, and noise. May not work with all games and movies, however.

qasdfdsaq 30/01/2012 12:29

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Course you can get the same thing for less than 1/5th the price in most countries on Ebay.