questions about SSD in E6400 media bay

for the E6400 media bay (I hope that's what it's called, I'm referring to the location where the optical disk is). I'd like to add a SSD before my trip to overseas and I have a few questions about this:

1) what kind of SSD should I get? I'd like to get a 128GB or 256GB SSD. Is it any 128/256GB SSD or do I need to get a specific kind?

2) If I want the SSD to be the primary drive and a 500GB HD to be the data drive, do I need to put the SSD in where the HD is and then put the 500GB HD in the optical disk caddy tray? (I bought the newmodeus caddy tray)

if you could help me out, that would be great. Thanks!

 

Either the Intel or OCZ drives, none of the others. Samsung does not yet support TRIM, and other drives either use crappy JMicron controllers or use less powerful controllers just like the ones found in OCZ Vertex or Agility drives. Avoid the OCZ Summit though, as Samsung has not been avoiding updating the Summit's controller to support TRIM.

For 120GB or so, stick with the OCZ Vertex or Agility. 250GB, again the Vertex or Agility.

 

... but if you can find G. Skill Falcons or Patriot Torques at the same capacity and lower price than the OCZ equivalent, there's no reason not to get one of those. They use the same Indilinx controller and therefore performance should be about the same. The only real benefit with going with OCZ is that you'll get firmware updates faster. After the TRIM update, though, I can't see another really compelling firmware upgrade for the current Indilinx controller.

 

Theoretically, you could put the SSD into the media bay. However, what happens if you need the DVD drive, for, say, installing something? You'd need an external. So, it would probably be smarter to put the SSD inside and the HDD into the bay.

 

and any 500GB or 640GB laptop HD would fit in the media bay, right? or do I need to be careful on that front as well?

PS. Thanks for all of the information!

 

Any 9.5mm height drive should work.

 

you'd need to get the newmodeus drive caddy if want to use a regular 2.5" laptop drive in there.

i've been using the Intel G2 160GB drive as my primary hard drive, and i plugged my old 320GB drive into my media bay. Works out pretty good, though I do realise that i'm gonna need to buy the esata connector for the dvd-rom drive.

 

Or similar caddys...

 

See this thread about putting HDDs in the media bay. Work back from the end.

John