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

Yeah,the cheap ebay thinkpad one I bought needed a fair bit of trimming around the sata port and along one side to even think about plugging in,one sharp stanley knife and twenty minute's later and I had a $20 usd 2.5" enclosure instead of the probably perfect fitting $500 usd 1.8" dell one........still a great deal imo.

Mine was made in the Philippines,and basically your right John about the production tolerance's,but hey,20 buck's for this is basically promoting slave labour rate's anyway,so you have to expect not "the best" fit and detail.
If dell weren't going through a phase of pricing lunacy,and employing einstein's making retarded decision's like 1.8" hard drive enclosure's,I would have bought the genuine version.

 

Here's one that takes 2.5" drives and has the latching mechanism...
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http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=224

 

I saw this on youtube before buying the generic one for $15 shipped. It would be nice to have the latching mechanism though =D

 

I'd pay the extra $ for the one gt3 mentions, i'd like it too fit with the finish of the M4400.

 

Nice!

I will include that link in the first post...

 

For those who bought on ebay, was it a tight fit or does it slide easily just as the optical drive does?

 

mine slides in smoothly halfway then i have to jiggle it before it would go in the rest of the way.

 

I assume this bay will work in the precision M6400 ?

 

The M6400 has a slot-loading optical drive, unlike the smaller Precision models. I'm not sure if the M6400's drive is removable (I don't see a release latch in the photos). But there is a 2nd hard drive option when configuring a new M6400, but it doesn't specify whether the 2nd drive is internal or in place of the optical drive...

 

The M6400 has two dedicated internal HDD bays. I was wondering if it could be made into a 4 HDD monster with 2 internal HDD + 1 HDD in optical drive bay + 1 external HDD connected via eSata