HowTo: Latitude E-/Precision M-Series Second 2,5" HDD

Ok, I just realized that the Latitude E uses 9.5mm ODD drives from Dell's support page (P/N for ODD drives), so the E-media bay only supports 9.5mm ODD drives. If these caddies are 12.7mm in height, how does this fit? Can someone help clarify this for me?

 

I don't have a vernier caliper at home to check the 12.7mm, but there is the thickness of the bottom of the caddy [that the HD sit's on]to consider plus on the newmodeUS one's have countersunk screw's to hold the hard drive to the caddy with pressed recesses in the bottom of the caddy [for the CS screw's] also using an extra mm or so.

There's no room for anything thicker, the newmode one is quite a tight fit as it is.

 

It is simple. They won't fit. But they aren't 12.7mm thick. You will have to use a 9.5mm caddy/drive for the E-series. I took a quick measure of my caddy. 9.7mm at a randomly chosen spot. So there is a little ... how does one say... clearance? ... But 12.7mm is definitely too much.

 

Thanks. I kinda figured it would be like that. Didn't realize the NewmodeUS caddies were 9.5mm for the Latitudes and 12.7mm for the generic notebooks (like the Studio XPS).

 

Hello R00bin i just ordered mine at same place, let me receive it and i will comment to you. =)

Ivan

M4400
T9600 - 2.8Ghz
4Gb - 800Mhz-DDR2
320 - HHD
512Mb - M770
VistaUltimate_64

 

has anyone built a RAID-0 using the media bay hard drive on an M2400? I ordered the caddy and getting ready to order another 500gb 7200rpm drive but would love to know if this is going to work or not first.

I did plug a smaller drive into the external port and the intel raid bios started to show but it only gave the option for I think a raid 1 I think.

 

All the precision's/latitude's except the M6400 don't support RAID 0 or 1, only intel rapid restore technology [IRRT] or disaster recovery.
I think you hit CTRL I to get the screen to stay where your option's are in the IMSM if memory recall's, the last time I looked, the option still wasn't there although that was a long time ago and there's been a few matrix storage manager update's since then, I do seem to remember another user investigating on the intel site about the ICH9M-E/M and it not supporting RAID, but like I said it was a while ago.

I've personally found RAID 0 offer's zip extra performance anyway unless you copy and move a lot of big file's around, and with matrix software raid, actually hurt's boot time a lot due to the IMSM RAID software initializing after posting to manage it, it seem's to me with the two notebook's I've had with IMSM RAID, that any advantage's with dragging small file's from two hard drive's are swallowed up with added seek time looking for them.

 

If I remember correctly (laptop isn't out) the M2400 has a ICH9M-E Chipset.

According to this intel site - http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/CS-022304.htm

It states that the chipset does support 2 Disk RAID 0 along with a few other things. Seems Dell is locking it down, not intel.

I'm looking to go RAID 0 for improved Virtual Machine performance, i'm finding right now my disk seems to be the biggest issue when running 3-4 VM's at once. I know it won't be great even with a RAID 0 but I'm sure it would be better than just with a single disk.

 

I've been using the NewmodeUS for a few weeks now with no problems. Great product: fits tightly and, unlike the IBM, locks in place. Occasionally it won't seat well enough to get recognized by Windows, but another re-insertion always does the trick.

 

Hey Ivan,

I've been using the enclosure for a few months and I can honestly say it's perfectly fine. I tend to be a bit OCD some times. You can "feel" a slight bluge when compared to the dvdrw drive but it's not really noticeable.