Reddit reviews Protronix SATA Optical Bay 2nd Hard Drive Caddy, Universal for 12.7mm CD/DVD Drive Slot (for SSD and HDD)
We found 39 Reddit comments about Protronix SATA Optical Bay 2nd Hard Drive Caddy, Universal for 12.7mm CD/DVD Drive Slot (for SSD and HDD). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Replace your laptop CD / DVD drive with a second hard drive or solid state driveMaximizes storage flexibilityCompatible with 2.5-Inch / 9.5mm SATA Hard Drives and Sold State DrivesWorks with all laptops that have a 12.7mm SATA optical bayPackage Includes: Hard Drive Caddy, Faceplate, Spacer for HDD Tray, Screwdriver, Screw
You have a CD/DVD drive right? Just use one of these
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XIU4T2
About the same price as a 2.5->3.5 caddy adaptor
You can use DVD sata cable. There are converters that convert mini sata to regular sata
Something like this
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XIU4T2/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1&th=1
Sure, this guy right here
I'm not sure I understand the question. I used replacement kit similar to this. After removing DVD drive I removed the external cover from the tray and attached it to the HDD kit. Laptop looks the same as before.
The slim CD-Rom drive can be removed, and a hard drive carrier installed in its place.
https://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Universal-12-7mm/dp/B004XIU4T2
That's the connector for the optical drive. OP could get a caddy that will allow him to use the SSD.
Something like this should do the trick.
Check the SSHD for errors using CrystalDiskInfo
If it has none, try factory reset first...
Those specs should be able to handle anything short of AAA Gaming.
A full SSD will do you wonders..
also, if you don't care about your CD drive you can replace it with a Optical Drive -> HDD adapter. Like this ...they come in a couple different sizes though so do your research.
If you get the adapter you can put your SSHD in there for mass storage.. and not have to buy a huge SSD for the main drive
This should work fine if it uses a standard optical drive. http://www.amazon.com/Drive-12-7mm-Universal-DVD-ROM-Optical/dp/B004XIU4T2
Yeah the easiest way is to replace the dvd drive with something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/product/B004XIU4T2
So basically, you can't pass through some of the drives in the controller, it's all or nothing with PCI passthrough
what i did for my esxi+freenas+r710 setup is:
If you wanted to use those drives in your bay, you'd have to get a second controller, and only pass one of the controllers over to freenas
We just did this for some r710's.. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XIU4T2
Takes the place of the DVD. It's very good.
This should work, I'd think.
=https://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Universal-12-7mm/dp/B004XIU4T2
>One of these.
>One of these.
>And a regular 2.5" SATA SSD. I'm assuming you don't actually use an optical drive.
Taken from here. Credit to u/Dstanding.
If you already have the DVD drive installed you won't need to buy the cable. I just bought 2 of these, and they work perfectly in my R510 and R710.
A normal optical drive to 2.5 drive adapter should work. There are lots for laptops. This one should work fine. https://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Universal-12-7mm/dp/B004XIU4T2
For heatsinks 40c is very cool for a cpu and fine. The chips are rated for a max of 80c so there is plenty of headroom. It should fit any normal lga 2011 heatsink but 2u coolers with fans are normally loud and really wont run much cooler as there is already a good amount of airflow.
So you'll have to use a optical drive caddy which your SSD slots right into.
I think this will work.
In my R710s my boot drives use an DVD-drive-to-2.5" adapter and are connected to the onboard SATA. R610 should be able to do the same thing.
These have been my go-to.
Yeah, totally. Most laptops only come with a single drive sled though, so installing two isn't really possible, unless you buy one that has a CD drive and install a CD-drive to 2.5" mount adapter
This is what you need: https://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Universal-12-7mm/dp/B004XIU4T2
It's plugged in to the mainboard at the bottom (in the front). I recommend an adapter like this:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XIU4T2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
In order to use FreeNAS with ESXi, you need to have another drive, not connected to the hba, that you can use as your datastore for your FreeNAS VM. It can't be a USB drive, so you will have to find another way to do it. I bought this to put my SSD in and it worked great.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XIU4T2/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Wow those CostCo computers are... budget.
Anyway, you can install an SSD in that ASUS and get the loading times really low too. It's just a few screws on the bottom. Intel SSDs go on sale for about $90/256GB or $199/512GB pretty regularly through B&H, Newegg, and Amazon. Don't go below 256GB unless you plan on removing your DVD drive and putting the hard drive in there alongside the SSD for extra storage using one of these.
Well, you're trying to "engineer" something... so there's that. Anyways, you probably could buy a http://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Universal-12-7mm/dp/B004XIU4T2 and use the connector out of it along with the knowledge here http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/Serial_ATA_%28SATA,_Serial_Advanced_Technology_Attachment%29 to come up with something. However I agree with others on this thread that a fan in the dvd bay would hardly make a difference. Although you could find something like http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835209052 but that actually fits in the bay, drill some holes in the bottom of the laptop, and face it inwards in the bay to direct air onto the motherboard.
But, as I said, these things are designed by people with far more knowledge than you or I, and so I would assume it already has all the cooling it needs. Unless, of course, you actually use it on your lap. Then you would need a lapdesk or a lap cooling pad, since you are blocking all the vents with your pants.
re move the cdrom drive then look around for a
cdrom to hard drive bay
Like this
http://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Universal-12-7mm/dp/B004XIU4T2
That's a different version than the one I have. I actually upgraded mine with the firecuda sshd as well and that's working great for me although I bought a 2.5mm spacer because I'm OCD and the old drive was 9.5mm height. My MSI wasn't equipped with an area for an additional ssd but you could try something like this if you have an optical drive you won't use: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XIU4T2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_UXUTAb5HW5R6F.
Please know that I didn't look at the specs for your specific laptop and don't know if this one will fit. I would imagine there is something similar available if you really need a second SSD. If you go this route you'll wanna make sure your laptop has a SATA connector to plug into and that the expansion bay will physically fit into your laptop.
Edit: I think the drive expansion I linked is for a standard size ssd also. If you buy the smaller laptop specific ssd you'll need something else
Protronix SATA Optical Bay 2nd Hard Drive Caddy, Universal for 12.7mm CD/DVD Drive Slot (for SSD and HDD) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XIU4T2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_Cu0PDbJQHHWZ4
The ssd I'm using is an adata su-800 128gb since it's just for the OS and a couple of applications. Lol make sure the SATA port is enabled in the bios. It took me a bit to realize I didnt enable the right one
Something like this? http://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Universal-12-7mm/dp/B004XIU4T2
Probably not the exact one you need but it should lead you in the right direction.
Everyone's right, SSD is the way to go.
Incase you really need more space than a new SSD you can afford will give you, many laptops can have a second hard drive installed in place of the optical drive.
https://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Universal-12-7mm/dp/B004XIU4T2
R210ii has 1GB NICs (two) and you can add a PCI-e (dual 10GB NIC -> https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-DP-N-0JM42W-10GB-DUAL-PORT-NIC-SERVER-ADAPTER/273534355669?epid=1426370513&hash=item3fafeb08d5:g:q2gAAOSwC8Zb2Lsx:rk:3:pf:1&frcectupt=true)
An R310 can do quad 3.5" Hard Drives (https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R310-3-06GHz-Quad-Core-Xeon-X3480-32GB-DDR3-RAM-NO-HDD-RAID/183503660932?hash=item2ab9aba784:g:T4wAAOSwg65b0gxN:sc:ShippingMethodStandard!33175!US!-1:rk:1:pf:1&frcectupt=true) and you can alternatively get an R410 (https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R410-Xeon-L5520-2-26GHz-32GB-RAM-NO-HDD/192705614327?_trkparms=aid%3D555017%26algo%3DPL.CASSINI%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D54338%26meid%3Dbdccbc35ce7b470b8af32bbb2aa7c182%26pid%3D100505%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D1%26%26itm%3D192705614327&_trksid=p2045573.c100505.m3226) you can swap the CD drive for a 2.5" SSD adapter (https://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Universal-12-7mm/dp/B004XIU4T2)
Maybe something like this, so yes.
Go internal whatever you choose and if you need extra physical space for such, go for things like this since DVD bay is nearly dead for most modern computers since using higher capacity USB Sticks for all transfers and boot CD requirements.
Yeah, I'd go with the computer listed. Another option would be to find a laptop from a store with a Skylake or Kaby Lake i5 or i3 with the "U" suffix,like i3-7100U. Then get a cheap 240GB SSD and swap that out with the HDD and reinstall Windows. You can even get an optical drive caddy for the HDD that came with the laptop and use it as additional storage, like this, but it sounds like she won't need that much space.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XIU4T2/
Would that work to swap out my very much unused DVD drive with a SATA II port for a new hard drive? Seems the SATA-to-board power cables for the R710 are rare and expensive but that seems like a viable alternative since I'm going to take the plunge and set up a small disk for the hypervisor as it just seems more efficient regardless. Thanks again for suggesting this as well. I was told I could get pretty much any HDD as long as its 64GB or more as the hypervisor won't need too much space, is that right? Also would an SSD make much difference in a SATA II port? (or would i even need one for my uses?)
On that note, can I use any molex<->sata power adapter? Or do I need SATA III for some reason?
Well personally I prefer Thinkpads cause of their reliability and durability but pretty much any laptop that has an optical drive can house a second hard drive. Just remove the optical drive and replace it with a hdd/sdd. For example using something like, https://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Universal-12-7mm/dp/B004XIU4T2
Its possible, and could work. Your better off just doing a clean install on the SSD, and transferring the data. You'll end up with better results.
You can transfer from the desktop to the laptop over the network. Turn the drive into a USB drive using a hard drive enclosure. Or if you dont use the dvd drive, you can always us an Optical Drive bay to turn it into extra storage and transfer from there.
Does your laptop have a CD drive caddy? You can get an optical bay caddy for it and place a second drive in there. Most laptops don't use the CD bay very much anyway.
https://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Universal-12-7mm/dp/B004XIU4T2/ref=pd_ybh_a_27?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=DTWA35PCKWWBXNV8KK72
Get an optical bay caddy (sometimes call a HDD caddy)
For example only: http://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Universal-12-7mm/dp/B004XIU4T2
It holds the SSD and plugs into where your dvd drive was.
You dont need a Toshiba Hard drive.
What model laptop do you have? Not just brand but model (like "Toshiba Satellite C55T-B5109")
For a bracket I was talking about something like this. If its the right size, you just replace the current DVD drive with this and stick any laptop hard drive in the bracket. So that way you can buy any laptop hard drive (or ssd) you want.
And yes, you will have to open your computer but laptops are meant to be opened to be able to replace the hard drives. instead of replaceing your current hard drive we'll just take out the disc drive
Hey PCMR folks! For my laptop, an Asus G55VW-DS71, I'm considering putting an SSD in the main slot and replacing my (non-working and non-used) optical drive with my current 1TB 5400 RPM HDD in a caddy like this since the mSATA slot is beyond my capabilities to access.
In your opinions is this a good/doable idea?
Also, is it worth the cost of a 1TB 7200 HDD to replace 5400 one? Would you notice much of a difference?
Also, are my parts choices crap?
Thanks!