Adding a CD-bay HDD to ASUS U30JC-A1

I plan to buy a U30JC-A1 in the near future and swap the main hard drive with a SSD, probably one of these.

I have no use for CD bays and was wondering if I can convert the CD bay to a second hard drive slot. Seeing as the laptop comes with a 320GB laptop drive, it would be a shame to waste it! Initial Google searches have been frustrating, though I have found a few links like this one. Evidently laptop CD bays vary, and you need to buy the correct expansion size.

So, questions:

• Does Asus use "universal" sized bays?
• Who would you recommend to buy from? I'd like to have the color match if possible, and good manufacture reputation ETC.
• What size drives work? Obviously I'd want to use the 2.5" that comes with it.
• How does the extra drive work? Is it hot-swappable while it's on?

 

You might want to read this thread, especially the opening post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=388625

 

Sweet! It looks like I need to measure how tall the optical drive is (12.7mm or 9.5mm) and look at the plug on the back of the optical drive to see if it's a SATA or PATA optical drive. I'd assume it's a SATA since it is a newer laptop.

Does anyone have that information? I've also asked Kevin O'Brien in his review thread.

 

Hard to find which drive it would be.
But that's the basics of it. 12.7 vs 9.5 & sata vs pata.

Optical drives are standards sizes, you should be ok with one of the four.
There's probably some kind of bracket to fasten it inside the laptop frame, it's easily transplanted to the caddy.

Cosmetics... well, it won't look nice looked up close.
Most faceplates are custom for the model. My laptop has now a IBM faceplate at the optical drive. Thinkpads look like bricks in general. But it fits and doesn't get outside the contours. Fine for me!

 

i'm quite sure its going to be a SATA since it uses new 5 series chipset... in fact since 4 series , all optical drives etc have been SATA... but as for faceplate , well u need some modding... and don't expect it to look nice.. when u do this , ur removing the beauty factor

P.S : guessing how thin it is , i think its going to be 9.5mm SATA...

 

According to Kevin O'Brien (the reviewer) it is a HL GT30N drive. This website it's a 12.7mm drive, and Kevin says it's a mini SATA connector.
Based on that information, it looks like I should get the OBHD-SATA12-SATA-B caddy from newmode.

It looks like they should take any standard 2.5" hard drive, so I'm assuming the laptop hard drive that ships with the laptop will fit. I'll be ordering all the parts in a few days.

 

Why not get the chrome version instead of the black? The SATA12-SATA looks like it would match the aluminum of the UJ30 better than the black...

Also you should consider whether you'll see $215 drive + $45 caddy worth of improvement by doing this on your computer, or if it would make more sense to bump up to a N61 i5 or the upcoming N63 or N82. Not that I don't like the idea of an SSD supporting TRIM running my OS and some programs with the extra drive for data, but whether it is worth the investment of that amount of cash. Could you get by with another SSD drive that is a bit smaller, but still supports trim? There was a notebookcheck review a little while ago that explored the long term usage of SSD drives by patriot

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Long-term-test-Patriot-Memory-Torqx-128-GB-SSD.26547.0.html

 

Looks like Asus went a 12.7mm sata optical drive. Other ultraportables like the HP 25x0P use a 9.5mm unit to maintain a thinner profile.

The 12.7mm unit has one bigger advantage, literally. You could add a 1TB 12.7mm 2.5" HDD into it if you really wanted a stack of storage.

 

Right. Same difference!

I'm interested in packing as much power as possible in 13" or smaller (my thread where I decided what to buy is here). I also am viewing the SSD and HDD caddy as an investment; at the end-of-life for this laptop, the hard drive(s) will probably still be good for a new set of hardware.

 

I've got both drives working, and they're an amazing combo! Thanks to everyone for their help (especially nando4, that guide is impressive)!

 

Did you end up going with the SSD you posted up? Which place did you put the SSD? Have you run Crystalmarkdisk to see if the drive is running at full speed? The link above that you posted which caddy it looked like, is that the one you ordered? I'm very close to ordering an SSD and this looks like a great solution.

Also, do you mind posting a picture of what the side of it looks like now that it has this in it please?

Thanks

 

You know that you can fit your DVD drive faceplate onto the caddy?
http://go.notebookreview.com/?http://newmodeus.com/pics/OBHD/OBHD-Faceplate-Installation-Guide.pdf

 

Know for a fact, no... I don't/didn't. I wanted to see a pic for 2 reasons: If it did work, I wanted to see the fitment and if it didn't work, I wanted to see how much space I had to work with to fab up something. Your link isn't working either, unfortunately.

I've bought replacement DVD drives before and the front covers didn't transfer over. This was probably 6-8 years ago so they may be more standardized now!

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/449726-u30jc-discussion-thread-57.html#post6192418

There is the link. Ive had a disucssion about it there. And yes, it is all standardized.

 

I'm common in that thread and saw it, thanks for posting the information up!