Smart Bay HDD picture?? ide or sata?

i ordered a empty HDD smart bay so i can put in my own hard drive to save some money, but since ive ordered it ive read in a couple places that it is a IDE/PATA connection inside the smart bay. i looked around and could find a IDE/PATA 500gb HD to put in it, but yet alienware offers that option. which leads me to believe that it is a SATA connector inside the smart bay.

does anyone have a picture of the inside of the HD smart bay or willing to take one so i can confirm the correct connector??
BTW.. i havent received my smart bay yet thats why im asking

 

There was some pics somewhere around the forum but the smart bay is 100% SATA

 

Definitely a SATA connector..

 

The SmartBay connector is SATA-only.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=240250&page=3

thread with my original pics

 

thank you exiled

 

I was thinking of purchasing a m15x- can i put my existing UJ-20 blu-ray drive in it?

 

i doubt it. its really hard to mod the smartbay disc drive. you will most likely have to buy the drive from AW. also there is no way to open the plate covering the components for the drive.

 

Any existing 12.7mm optical drive can be placed in the smartdrive case.(i.e., blu-ray)

Walkthrough w/photos of smartbay drive disassembly and optical drive replacement
http://4help.alienware.com/cgi-bin/...XJ0YmF5IG9wdGljYWwgZHJpdmU*&p_li=&p_topview=1

 

so this means unlike my dell latitude models with their modular bays which are pata im sure these will transfer as fast as the sata bus can with the fastest sata drives?

what is the sata controller in the m17x? i take it since it can have 3 drives, and you had them in raid-0 you could transfer to or from the modular drive at full pelt i beleive notebooks disc drivs are around 70mb a second now ? excluding ssd's ofcourse

 

Instead of starting a new thread, I thought I would ask in this one. I have just purchased the HDD kit for the smartbay, and im currently trying to find a HDD for it.

I have searched the forum but all site recommendations for the HDD's don’t post to the UK. Does anyone know if this will fit?

'Western Digital 250GB 2.5 inch 9.5mm 5400rpm 8MB SATA'

The price is £45 which seemed quite expensive. Can anyone find a cheaper option or know any good sites for the UK?

Thanks for any help...

 

I think all 9.5mm disks fit, I recently fit a Samsung 500gb and I think that was 9.5mm. I'm sure someone will be along to correct me if I'm wrong.

 

any standardized laptop HDD will fit. 9.5mm is the limit i believe, yeah. as for pricing, i'd suggest hunting around different online shops to find a good deal on a big one (320gb or 500gb, i don't see much sense in going any lower).

 

hi jakey200.
im assuming you have ordered the empty smartbay kit from alienware europe? im only asking as i rang them about a month ago asking if i could purchase the empty kit and was told i couldnt buy one from them.
please can you confirm for me what you purchased, and if you dont mind, how much it was?

 

dsproductions - they are £23 including postage and VAT. You need to ring tech support rather than sales.

 

Mine was £25 including postage....was for the empty hard drive kit, I rung sales directly and they were pretty helpful.

 

thats excellent, ill give them a ring on payday, if you can update me on which hard drive you get, or if anyone else has bought one so i know what dimensions it needs to be thatd be great.

 

any standard laptop HDD will do the trick. 9.5mm height. as for capacity, might as well go for either 320gb@7200rpm or 500gb@5400rpm.