Are optical drive HDD caddies okay to use?

[mcveigh]

A friend has an Asus N750JK laptop and does a lot of architecture and drafting stuff on it (student). She has an i7 CPU and 8GB ram but I was cleaning it up for her and I think her 1TB 5400RPM hard drive is really slowing it down.

She doesn't need the dvd drive and I was thinking of getting her a caddy that replaces the dvd drive with a HDD. Are there any issues with these? compatibility? slower speeds for some reason?
I've found some on ebay
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-2nd-SATA-Hard-Drive-SSD-HDD-Caddy-for-ASUS-N550JV-N750JV-re-GU71N-UJ8C2-/271256107620

I'm thinking of putting in a SSD drive there and keeping the 1TB HDD for storage.

 

[corkyg]

You are talking about an adapter that lets you replace an optical with a HDD, SSD, or added battery. Lenovo Thinkpads have it as a stabdard called Ultrabay. I have used them for several years - they work great. I keep the optical in a padded bag and can swap it in if necessary for playing a disk or installing new stuff. Other brands have such adapters as well.

Given your plan for boot drive (SSD) and storage, I woujld revertse them. Put the SSD in the primary space and the HDD for storage in the adapter space. That way you can swap for the optical at any time w/o changing your boot sequence.

 

[mcveigh]

Thanks, excellent idea on switching them!

 

[xgsound]

This worked in 20 minutes with Win7. YMMV

When I added an SSD to the wife's laptop, I put the SSD in the caddy at first. Then I used Aomei Partition Manager (free) to clone only the system partition to the SSD. Then switched the SSD into the HDD space with no other HHD for initial startup or two. This insures problem free switching between HHD and DVD.

The latest Aomei can clone to a smaller SSD if the data will fit. If you leave the HHD and DVD out when not needed, you get the advantage of better battery life also! Interestingly, nothing is stopping you from having as many spare data drives as you want. I think my caddies were $9 each plus $3 shipping from Amazon. Link here http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005L94EAM/ref=ox_ya_os_product_refresh_T1


Jim