Modular bay interface?

What interface is used by the modular bay in Latitude D? Is it different from Latitude E? What's the maximum transfer rate(the bottleneck for the bay)?
I am under the impression that the bay actually uses USB 2.0HS and the socket is Dell proprietary (it can supply power also).
I am wondering what kind of speed I can get from a SATA 3.0 SSD in the bay. There is a chip in the caddy that also determines the speed, is it correct?
I saw USB 3.0 modular bay on Dell's website, does the interface really support 5Gbps+?
Thanks

 

E-series uses SATA drives in the modular bay, so it will be faster than the IDE used in the D-series. If you remove the plastic housing from a D-series modular bay drive, you'll see the standard 9.5mm IDE connector.

As for the USB 3.0 bay, I think it will be limited by SATA 2.0, so you'll be better off using eSATA.

 

The Intel chipset physically is ATA/100 (ICH8M) on the Latitude D630/D830. You can buy D-series bay adapters that include a SATA to ATA bridge, which will connect in, but that will be limited to the ATA/100's chip speed (and might not pass TRIM commands correctly!). Give it a shot and let us know, I guess. Any decent SSD will be far faster than any mechanical HDD either in the D-bay, or in the primary SATA/300 controller.