for people who like to mod their computers

Okay, question.

I want to strip out my DVD/CD writer on my new laptop and put a second hard drive there, because I can count the number of times on one hand I actually use it, and a.) put that into an enclosure to use with the eSata connection and b.) put a second hard drive in the place that the writer was. Becuase my ultimate goal is to move the new 500G into that slot and get a SSD in the primary and basically have a really creepy tech orgasm for days.

Okay, I know I can do that, but here's my question.

Everywhere I read it keeps saying I need to buy this caddy to replace it with, and I'm not sure why. From what I read on the specs, the writer is sata (if it's not sata, I won't bother unless I can find another sata connection on the board) and I can't see why I can't pull out the writer, gut it, and put the hard drive in there and plug it into the writer's sata connection. What am I missing?

I experimented with this already but I ran into the problem that no one makes the correct kind of pata/sata interface with slimlines and it required me to buy a caddy or find an engineering student who might trade a blowjob for designing me a working interface (and that was a close thing) as the specific type of interface I needed basically didn't exist. If I'm doing sata to sata, I should be able to just do that myself with an interface cable? And create screw holes to screw the drive into the writer's old caddy? Or is this a heat issue? I read the specs for the caddy and it's not like it looked all that hard.

If you need more specifics, I can be more specific. Any suggestions? I mean, I could buy the caddy, I get that, but building my own caddy will keep me more content with the universe while I still destroy motherboards learning to solder. If I can get this to work, I swear I will write up a complete post with pictures illustrating how it's done.

ETA: Link to the caddy, one with pata and one with sata. I'm not seeing why I couldn't do this myself with a sata; the pata interface, yeah, that seems to be impossible to find.

Comments

[mrshamill]

shrug

Yeah, like I just posted elsewhere, that should work. The biggest thing to watch for is the jumpers, as those laptop drives are master by default, you've got to get a jumper setting (if it's not printed on the drive, you can usually find it on the manufacturer's website) to make sure it's set for slave. Then you can plug it in and you're good to go.

[deadlychameleon.livejournal.com]

My only caveat would be that it might make loading a new operating system (or repairing your current one) problematic, since windows is designed to be impossible to install without a CD drive. (you might need an external CD drive, essentially)

[ghfan-98.livejournal.com]

Any word on the release date of the Gemini pad?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

My near-daily checks show nothing yet. There's supposed to be another Android tablet released soon that is getting some amazing reviews, but nothing that is making me drool. I'm even stalking the ICD facebook and nope.

[jamesinboots.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's any reason you can't make your own caddy and hook it up yourself. A SATA hookup is a SATA hookup, to my knowledge. Your laptop should be able to detect what type of drive it is and adjust accordingly. There are a couple things you should look into, like making sure the hard drive has enough free space above/below it. If it's actually touching the caddy anywhere but the sides, that's generally bad news. I think. And you'll want to make sure the hard drive fits very snugly in the caddy so there's no chance of it wobbling inside.

It's about size.

[jarlsberg71.livejournal.com]

HDD are smaller than OD's so you'd need the caddy to put the drive in for stabilization, vibration control and all that jazz.

As for the above comment, a Sta hookup *IS* indeed a sata hookup, However, with laptops, all bets are off, since they use proprietary connectors both in the caddy chassis and most likely the internal wiring of it.