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

Thanks for the info.
Still waiting for my E4300 to arrive.

 

Can anyone confirm that the transfer rate between the primary and secondary drives runs at full speed? I had an M4300 with two drives, however for some reason the secondary drive topped out at 15-20mb/s.

 

I have just checked my E6400 with eSATA HDD (should perform the same as a second internal HDD) and got a transfer rate of around 45MB/s for a big (1GB) file and 35MB/s for a folder containing ~3GB files. The latter isn't slow since copying 1.6GB took about 40 seconds.

These tests were between two 500GB 5400rpm HDDs which offer some of the best transfer rates.

What HDDs do you have and what do their HD Tune performance graphs look like? Is the destination HDD partitioned? If so, to which partition were you copying? If not partitioned then how full is the HDD and has it been defragmented? If the drive is getting toward full then it is likely that the data are being written to an area near the slow end of the HDD (and may be fragmented as well). My destination folder was on my C partition (first of 5, so in the fastest part of the HDD).

John

 

Hi. I just bought one off eBay but Vista doesn't detect it. Is there something in the Bios or anything I can enable? I put a spare 2.5" hdd inside and nothing is happening.

I put the hard drive in the caddy and inserted the caddy in the system. bios does see anything under the modular drive part. when i insert the dvdrw drive, bios sees it.

any help would be appreciated

Thanks

 

I can't think of any option in the BIOS which would block the HDD. However, there are three SATA modes for you to choose from, but watch out that you need to have a Dell factory Windows installation to be able to change modes and avoid a BSOD when Windows starts (but this won't stop you trying the different modes at the BIOS level).

Does the HDD show up on Windows disk management?

John

 

No it doesn't show up in windows disk management. This is so weird. I am tempted to buy another one, but all the pictures on eBay suggest that they are all from the same manufacturer.

Any other ideas? Is there a way for me to test it on a PC? The sata cable fits but not for the power (i think)

 

I assume that you know that the HDD works OK so suspicion falls on the connectors in the bay unit. One could test continuity of the individual terminals using a multi-meter, but it would fiddly. Does the HDD power up? If not, then can you inspect the power connector contacts and see if they look OK.

One other thought: Which HDD are you using and what is its power rating. There's a small chance that the ribbon cable can't pass enough power to get the disk spinning.

Yet another test would be to put the internal HDD into the bay and see if is recognised and boots up.

John

 

Hey John,

Thanks for the great responses. I think I finally fixed it. There might be different variations in these products, because I noticed that my SATA connector is slightly more dimpled in than the stock DVDRW - enough that I don't think the SATA connector was properly connected no matter how far in I pushed.

I will borrow the OP's photo for now:



In that picture it looks ok, but mine was a little too far in to make a proper connection. I took off the metal plates to expose the housing for the circuit board and "modded" the case a little so that the SATA connector was flush to the casing.

I can post pictures if anyone wants to see my "mod" in case you get one of these bad caddies.

 

Here are some pictures. I cut parts of the upper right hand corner in the first picture. In the third picture the SATA connector is angled towards the opening more than before. Notice I stuck a piece of plastic towards the bottom of the board to make sure its firmly angled. The last picture shows how its almost flush with the casing.

Hope this helps someone!

 

Thanks for the update and the fix. It seems that the manufacturing tolerances of these "compatible" units need to be improved.

John