DIY: Adding SSD or HDD storage using an optical bay caddy

Everest buffer read - older 80GB Travelstar IDE in 2510P/PATA caddy as slave 87MB/s, 1.8" ZIF as master 84MB/s as shown here

The official spec of the ATA100/UDMA5 PATA Intel ICHx interface is 100MB/s read and 88.9MB/s write. Benchmark above shows the interface tops out at ~87MB/s.

Using SATA SSDs in a sata-to-pata caddy

If you are thinking of using a sata-to-pata optical bay caddy, there is some difference in performance between the newmodeus and ebay (Marvell) bridge chips. I've collated a summary of benchmarks on the web of SSDs installations in sata-to-pata caddys here. We can see sata SSDs perform very well using such a solution.

You'll notice too that all the current SSDs, including Intel X25-M G2, does not even yet saturate the PATA maximum interface speed in it's 4kb random read speeds where a lot of SSDs spend much of their time.

 

DOH! ok, thanks for the info. i have emailed them for a replacement. will try to boot without disk drive and use hotswap to plug in after, but not ideal.
heads up for other acer people to check first.
unlucky day yesterday, first wrong adapter and my new razer mouse also just delivered with middle button not working

 

Wow great info! Thx a lot.
Sounds 10000000% worth a try

 

had a think about my problem and solved it last night. the answer was to install my boot manager (boot-it) on to the second (dvd drive bay) disc. without the hard disk in (booting with dvd in) lappy boots as normal. with the extra drive in (which is now hd 0, main one being hd 1) i have the same menu on there, but os startups just point to boot from hd 1 instead of hd 0. problem solved
disk to disk transfers are nearly double usb speeds for same disks.
also, hot swapping was no problem with hotswap! so all is well

 

Nando, is there any chance you know where I could buy just the circuit board without the actual casing.

I have a case from a broken DVD drive that is perfect.
I though if I could get the board then I could retrofit it into the casing.

It might save me some money

EDIT: I got the ebay caddy.

Results attached to this post.

 

Below are links to help you identify if the ebay or newmodeus circuit board is more suitable for your purposes. Maybe newmodeus.com can sell you just the circuit board?

newmodeus sata-to-pata logic board


There is a Rev_A board without master/slave jumper or a Rev_C with it as shown above.

ebay (Marvell) sata-to-pata caddy pics showing the screwholes are here and here.

Your Toshiba Tecra A9 uses a 12.7mm PATA optical drive. The cheapest option is a HP NC6000 caddy. They have peculiar metal bracket around it which you can discard. Or can just pay US$25 and have a solution that will work, even if you can't adapt it to your spare optical drive chassis. See below:

US$17-delivered NC6000 12.7mm sata-to-pata caddy
US$25-delivered various generic 12.7mm sata-to-pata caddies

I'd be curious if you got the ebay caddy using the Marvell sata-to-pata chip, as used in Lenovo Ultrabay adapters, to see how well it performs relative to your normal sata connector.

 

Sweetness - Thanks and Props to the OP!

Best upgrade yet

My Dell Vostro 1400 with Intel ICH8M chipset -

Thanks for the Great info - I used to be on the bleeding edge of technology - I almost pulled the trigger on a SSD summer of 2008 - I am so glad that I waited - I picked up an OCZ Agillity 60GB for $128 from ZZF (after MIR) - I was running on a 2 year install of XPSP2 that had a bloated 58MB registry - so it was time for a fresh install.

- I had been looking for a way to have both a SSD and a 2.5 500GB platter

So I slipstreamed XP SP3 w/ the new intel 8.9 ICH drivers ( Aug 2009) -

The physical HD in the optical caddy is faster than it was when it was in factory HD position (not sure if it is the new Intel ACHI drivers - but my PATA speeds are faster than my SATA speeds (OEM factory connector) The fastest read speeds I have seen from a 5400 RPM 2.5 SATA on my laptop has been 64MB/S this is almost a 4 X speed increase.

I am planning on picking up a Hitachi 7500K (500GB -7200rpm SATAII 9.5mm with on the fly controller powered encryption as soon as they hit the market.) Travelstar™ 7K500 w/Bulk Data Encryption (BDE)

I had read that most of the notebooks were ICH8M and were handicapped at SATA 1.5.

This screenie was before any SSD tweaks. - I got similar numbers from ATTO.

I have a T9500 with 4GB - but this makes my little 14.1" Notebook Scream ---

Thanks to the OP ! Now I just need to get a external slim DVD enclosure - I did'nt realize how much that I still used Optical disks.

 

Hi Orgon Sunset,

Very pleased to hear your results. A very quick 14.1" T9500 system you have there. Which sata-to-pata caddy did you use for the 2.5" HDD (ebay or newmodeus?). Also, any chance you could you also post crystaldiskmark benchmarks comparing the performance using the native sata connector versus the optical bay caddy for *both* the SSD and HDD? Would be great to get an idea of how much performance loss there is across the sata-to-pata bridge. For the HDD I would expect it to be minor, but the SSD there would be some for sure, since ATA100/UDMA is specced at 100MB/s (~87MB/s real world), SATAII is specced at 300MB/s (~250MB/s real world).

 

Superb guide +rep

I assume the above is still true as I am unable to find any SATA-SATA apart from newmodeus which in my opinion are ridiculously overpriced for what is effectively a port extension.

 

I forgot to thank you for your guide. I purchased myself a newmodeus bay caddy to put a ssd as a primary disk and keep my old HDD for data storage. Everything worked great. Very ingenious !!! Thanx again.

 

Deleted - incorrect info.

 

Is there any reason why I couldn't just use a SATA extension cable as long as I made everything secure in the slot loading optical drive bay?

EDIT: Ah that cable won't work as the SATA connector in the laptop will be slimline (7 pins in the signal segment and 6 pins in the power segment, rather than 7 and 15 respectively). I will have to get separate cables, one for data and a 6 pin to 15 pin for power.

EDIT: Doesn't look like that's possible either. What about one of these and these? Could even chop the molex off and replace with the full SATA female power connector.

EDIT: Actually ignore all that I'm going to try this instead. I just hope being 9.5mm high it will work ok in my 12.7mm space. Also noticed that it doesn't have a removable face plate so I hope it will fit ok where my slot loading optical drive is. Any advice on that?

EDIT: I don't think that caddy will fit in the space length wise as my internal DVD drive is 5" deep as stated here and the caddy is 5.68" deep as stated here. Looks like it's either NewmodeUS or the custom cable.

 

Hi guys.

I have this optical drive. http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=AD-7530B&cat=DVD (sorry couldn't take photos - cam outta battery) but i'm looking to buy this one. http://cgi.ebay.com/SATA-2nd-Hard-D...C_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item56359e90c5

on the back of my optical drive it seems to be a PATA port as shown on newmendus website.
Can anyone please confirm this I really like this idea of adding a second hdd.

Cool thread nando

 

The Sony NEC AD-7530B you list is a PATA optical drive. If it's 12.7mm tall, rather than 9.5mm, then the 12.7mm sata-to-pata optical bay caddy you have linked is the correct replacement for the optical drive. A picture of your BenQ S41 suggests to me it's a 12.7mm drive.

 

heh. You remembered my benq s41!

I'm glad i kept my original optical drive after getting a new replacement. Maybe i can take its faceplate (if need be).

Damnit. Do you know if any of these external optical enclosures fit 12.7mm? doesn't even tell us! here and here

thanks for the help nando. Can't wait! to buy it

edit: Oh what does mean in hdd with 5400.3 and 7200.1 etc etc? what are those dots.

 

The DVD drive in the SXPS 1640 uses a SATA connection, right?
I checked on ebay for a drive from a studio xps 16 and I found one listing for a " Dell studio xps 15 16 17" blu-ray drive. If I get a Studio XPS 16 with just a regular DVD drive, will it use a SATA connection as well? If that's the case then I guess I need this one:
http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_27&products_id=220

If anyone has done this on their SXPS 16, is it flush with the surface of the laptop or does it stick out? How does it look?

 

Wow, this is an amazing concept, but I'm not sure if I could do that with my optical BR drive. Not sure if I want to remove my BR drive in the first place.

If it's possible, let me know, thanks!

Mr. Mysterious

 

Bryan the 1640's DVD drive is actually 12.7mm high so you would be better getting one of these:

http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_27&products_id=244

That way you can fit a 12.7mm high 2.5" hard drive like the 1TB Western Digital. I will be doing this exact mod in a few weeks when I am next in the USA.

Alternatively you could use the two cables I linked to in my previous post but you would have to somehow secure the HD inside the void. A few people have done this with their mac notebooks:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=582906

My post in the Dell XPS forum:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=421654

 

does anyone know what these different seagate naming means: 5400.3, 5400.4. 7200.3 etc etc?

I try searching everywhere don't have any clue what they're called and don't know..

thanks!

 

It's just the [rotational speed].[generation]

 

Bah, cool thanks. Does the generation matters? I normally just buy things according to price but have read that like WD, green drives, blue drives etc. Seagate has ones with single platters, double.

Should i just look for a thread somewhere here to read

 

Writing to say that I used this guide to buy a 12.7mm sata-to-sata Newmodeus caddy, and it works perfectly. Its face cover is more square than the original ODD cover, which makes it look a bit odd and perhaps changes some of the airflow (more air can now pass around the faceplate of the ODD), but that's no major issue.

Now a couple of issues:
1. using hdparm to set the drive to standby, the setting never seems to "stick". It is accelerated right back to normal rotational speed (I can hear it, and confirm it with the hdparm HDD status query). Anyone has any idea how to fix this?
2. to work around 1., I disabled the 2nd SATA port in the BIOS. But Windows XP still sees the 2nd HDD. (?!) Anyone knows why? Or how I could reliably disable the ODD hard drive?

I can't easily remove the ODD caddy / swap it with the ODD, since it needs to be screwed down, and that happens under the bottom cover of my notebook. So that's why I need a firm/software solution to minimize wear on the 2nd HDD when I'm not using it.

Thanks!

 

Hi there.

I just had a question regarding which caddy I need to buy. I have a 2.5" WD Scorpio 320GB drive I wish to use. My laptop is an Acer 6920G and I'm going to replace my optical drive with a caddy. I'd also like to buy an enclosure for my drive to plug via USB if I need to use it.

Basic info:
Optical Drive: Optiarc BD ROM BC-5500A
Height: 12.7mm
Interface: PATA
Location: 0 (Channel 0, Target 0, Lun 0)

Drive: WD Scorpio 320GB SATA.

I'd like a caddy that will do the SATA->PATA conversion.

I have replaced my main OS SATA2 drive with a 2.5" Intel X25M G2 80GB SSD, just want a second hd for bigger storage/archive.

Best suggestions?

 

Optical Bay Caddy
Ebay 12.7mm sata-to-pata or newmodeus 12.7mm sata-to-pata. I would suggest the ebay solution as it's Marvell sata-to-pata bridge chip appears to be faster than the newmodeus' Sunplus one based on SSD testing done in each shown here.

Optical drive enclosure

Plenty of 12.7mm USB enclosures using the JAE50 PATA connection one bay.

You are likely seeing the spinup due to Windows writing to caddy's HDD. Could try the following to spindown the HDD and ensure it remains so:

1/ spindown hdd in caddy, eg: "hdparm -y -S 12 /dev/sdb"
2/ Use hotswap! software to 'Safely Disable' the caddy's HDD.

When you need the HDD, use "Scan For Hardware Changes". The SATA port itself can be disabled in Device Manager as well in IDE ATA Adapters section.

 

Thanks, 1/ I already tried but 2/ hotswap removal and SATA port disable didn't cross my mind (for some reason). Will try them out when I put the HDD back in (I had to remove it since for some reason Linux doesn't want to recognize it when mounted internally, so that I can restore my Ubuntu partimage backup).

 

hey nando and others,

what software did you use to benchmark your hdd's?
I got everest but when i go to benchmark tab i dont see any hdd benching.

furthermore USB interface is around only 60MB(~30MB real data rate?). Sata is meant to be around 60-87MB rate right?

Just wanted to test my 2nd internal hdd using this bay caddy but doesn't seem to be any faster.
Is there any loss in speed using our dvd burner externally with USB? I did some file transfers from dvd and it seems around same i think

cheers

 

A number of bioses set PATA controller to UDMA-2 (33MB/s) interface speed

This is relevant to sata-to-pata or pata caddies only!.

Three tested systems have their pata optical bay interface set to UDMA2 by the bios as is suitable for optical bay drive use: BenQ S41, Toshiba Tecra A9, HP Pavilion DV2000. This slows down the HDD's performance when used in the caddy. To get full performance add an entry into your Startup Folder to switch the interface to UDMA5:

1. Download hdparm for Windows.
2. Identify the drive you wish to operate on and it's transfer rate:
   
   Code:

   hdparm -i /dev/sda
   hdparm -i /dev/sdb
   hdparm -y -S 12 /dev/sdb &REM set standby timeout=1min, standby the drive now

3. Set a batch file to run in startup setting your chosen drive to UDMA5 mode.
   
   
   Code:

   hdparm -X udma5 /dev/sda
   hdparm -X udma5 /dev/sdb 

Note: A standby/resume will require this to be re-run to set the interface back to UDMA5 mode. To workaround that add above lines into the example resume-setfsb.vbs and add resume-setfsb.vbs to your startup.

A better way - grub2 bootloader

Sort of.. it as a hdparm module, but not coded as yet to accept a "-X udma5" parameters to switch into the faster operation mode.

 

Hi there Im keen in buying one of these and was wondering whats the one I should be getting for my Vaio Z26gn?

Thanks

 

Hi Nando, thanks.

Will definitely try those benchmarks and report back. As you said those umda stuff are only for sata to pata so i won't worry about it. Only using a samsung hm160Hi atm but heard it's meant to be pretty fast.

cheers

update:
hey i did the benchmarks. not sure how accurate they are as:

1. Main drive is split into 3 partitions- C:, D:, E:, and only tested c:

• 2nd drive is I:

• Not sure if I got the correct options. Options you see on screen are what i did. for performancetest i just went to perferences to change drive there and at the top i went to test>Disk>all

They all seem very slow. All hdd's are 5400rpms. <160GB
Heres 1st drive, heres 2nd drive through use of optical bay

thanks.

ps: how to put 2nd hdd to enable spin down/power save. everest shows my 1st hdd as enabled
edit: i see hdparm has the ability to do acoustic management, spindown time, setting advanced power management etc etc however don't know what my original drive is set at. So probably won't bother using hdparm for this task. Does windows have this option?

 

i have an Acer 5920g and is planning to use my 500GB Seagate momentus as a secondary drive with a 64gb SSD as the primary drive.

I think, though im not sure, that i might need a 12.7mm sata-pata caddy right?
Correct me if im wrong.

I also need good suggestions as to which caddy to purchase.

Thanks.

 

Guys, I have an HP Compaq 8510w system. Optical drive is MATA DVD-RAM UJ-861H ATA (assuming PATA here). So how would I determine the Caddy I would need for this system? I believe this is Intel ICH8M chipset.

 

This ebay ad says UJ-861H is a 12.7mm unit. So you'll need a 12.7mm sata-to-pata optical bay caddy. Note UDMA2/ATA33 interface bios setting quirk witnessed on a number of other such systems.

 

My caddy bought from Ebay just arrived!!
This the item i bought
http://cgi.ebay.com/SATA-2nd-Hard-D...es_HardDriveEnclosures_RL?hash=item5ad31becc7

And the performance tested w/ Hitachi_HTS541612J9SA00

 

Awesome, thanks, Nando, will check it out. Worst comes to worst, even if it's slow it's not a huge deal, I am out $20, that's all. Are there external USB enclosures for the slim drives? That would be kind of interesting.

 

ebay/newmodeus sata-to-pata SSD and HDD performance benchmarks are here.

Lack of AHCI's NCQ dampens sata HDD's performance

The UDMA5/ATA100 interface will cap reads to 100MB/s and writes to 88.9MB/s, which in real life appear to be around 88/65 as seen by the OCZ Vertex benchmarks. Lack of AHCI's Native Command Queueing (NCQ) on the PATA interface means the same SATA HDD has lower random read/write performance in a sata-to-pata caddy as those read/writes are not grouped to minimise seeks as they are on AHCI sata. Eg: Changing the Vostros native SATA AHCI to legacy IDE (SATA) mode saw PerformanceTest's result drop from 623 to 393.

The atto 4kb read/writes of the ebay caddy are 8-15% faster than the newmodeus caddy. Indilinx based SSDs use a 4kb NAND size so if wishing to use such an SSD, the ebay caddy is the faster performance option. The rest of the benchmarks show the newmodeus and ebay caddy to have virtually the same performance.

Ebay caddy modifications

The ebay caddy can be modded to stiffen the faceplate, set master mode, and have HDD LED functionality on your system in addition to the little red/green LED on the caddy. 1: chassis mod for fit and hotswapping faceplate strength 2: circuit mod for Master operation and HDD system LED

Fit and Appearance: Ebay caddy vs newmodeus caddy. See Comparison: ebay versus newmodeus 9.5mm sata-to-pata caddy

 

I'm looking for a HDD caddy for the XPS 16, are there any differences in those compatible with only certain models, such as:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sata-2nd-HDD-Ca...C_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item56359dd6ff
http://cgi.ebay.com/Sata-HDD-Caddy-...C_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item5189c89ace

Compared to this:

http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=244

 

Yes - they differ. The ebay units you have linked are 9.5mm unit. There are no 12.7mm sata ebay units that I've been able to find. The only way to get a 12.7mm sata unit via ebay would be to buy the 12.7mm sata-to-pata caddy for the chassis and buy the 9.5mm sata caddy for the circuit board and swap the board, hoping the chassis/circuit are compatible. The newmodeus 12.7mm sata caddy is the simpler option. Going the ebay route may mean you'd get 2 caddies, out of it, that could be used on pretty much all the equipment out there. Though in my testing I found a 9.5mm sata-to-pata caddy fit perfectly where a 12.7mm sata-to-pata caddy should have been used. Not a pretty fit, but did allow me to do data transfers between a 9.5mm and 12.7mm system with a single caddy.

 

Ahh yes, I should have linked to the newmodeus 9.5mm caddy for a more fair comparison. What I was asking is why there is such a cost difference btw eBay's <$10 vs. $40-50? Is there any quality difference (10x the price)? If I only need 9.5mm, should I go for eBay?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Sata-HDD-Caddy-...C_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item5189c89ace

vs.

http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_27&products_id=179

Second Q: The Dell Latitude E series uses 9.5mm ODD, how do they use a 12.7mm caddy?

 

Frig. So those compatible with the T500/E6500 are 9.5mm in height (the eBay one). I guess I'll have to look for a more generic 12.7mm one, so that it would fit. But all the ones on eBay seem to be 9.5mm. Also, a lot of older caddies on eBay that have SATA HDD to PATA ODD. Argh. Maybe will have to go with NewModeUS and suck up the $40.

One other question about weight, surely the 12.7mm and 9.5mm caddies don't both weigh the same 400g. If you have either do you mind reporting the weight of your caddy (and which one you got)? For reference, the Lenovo 9.5mm caddy for Z series (40Y8725) weighs 105g. Unfortunately Lenovo didn't have any info on the 9.5mm caddy for the new T/W series, Ultrabay Adapter III (43N3412), but some stores claim it's 2.8 oz (80g).

 

Hey there nando4. I ended up getting the Ebay 12.7mm sata-to-pata caddy.. But, is there a way to set it as a slave and not master? My SSD is inside my laptop in the previous SATA port. It's booting from the PATA port now.

 

Great topic here, I have read it with great interest and am going to give it a try.

I also believe I have found the missing option - 12.7mm high SATA-SATA on ebay. Looks like it has been modified a little in height from the slim edition.

This is the link http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200401304358

Thanks for all the info - when it arrives I will post my experience as well.

 

Nice find.

 

Great find. Yes, Google tells me R400/R500/W700 use 12.7mm sata optical drive and the product linked makes a point of the caddy being a 12.7mm unit. Added to the Configuration Matrix on the first post.

Phoenix Bios quirk - optical bay hdd detected as primary boot HDD0 instead of optical drive

I noticed this on the DV2000 I tested the sata-to-pata caddy on. The primary bay is sata too. Setting the sata-to-pata caddy to master/slave will not solve the problem.

On the DV2000, the Phoenix BIOS has a bootup menu/option to boot from the HDD or Optical drive. Only problem is it detects the optical caddy HDD as HDD0: (optical drive HDD) and HDD1: (primary drive HDD), and boots from the HDD0. There is no bios option to direct bootup from HDD1.

This can be corrected by directing bootup to the the primary bay HDD from the optical bay HDD using:

- grub bootloader with "map (hd0) (hd1);map (hd1) (hd0)" remapping
- configure boot.ini/BCD entries on the optical bay's HDD. EasyBCD makes it much easy to setup Vista/Win7's BCD.

 

It should be noted that the 12.7 mm SATA-SATA unit from ebay will accept only the low 2.5" drives ~ max 500 GB at the moment.

 

Actually 640GB from WD is 9.5mm.

 

This is a great thread. I'm planning to try it ..
can we use 9.5mm height harddisk in 12.7mm ebay caddy ??
Thanks

 

Yes, all the 12.7mm caddies take 9.5mm drives.

 

okay, I'm ready to do some ordering from ebay now ..
Thanks nando4 and sgogeta4 !

edit: the notebookelite's ebay 12.7mm caddy in below link stated: "This device accept 2.5'/12.7mm SATA HDD."
http://cgi.ebay.com/Laptop-IDE-50-p...C_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item5636c9e4d7
and the seller replied that I should be better buy the 9.5mm caddy,
but my optical drive's height is 12.7mm and I want to use 9.5mm harddisk ..
does it really fit? (I'm sorry for asking again but I need to confirm it ) Thanks

 

Yes, the mounting holes will position the drive correctly, even if it's in a slot for a higher model.

 

the ebay 9.5mm sata-to-pata caddy comes with 4 screws suitable to screw down the HDD, but no screw holes to mount them. Not that it's necessary, the HDD just slides in and is held down by the sata connector. Maybe the screws are provided if you want to drill holes yourself? The 12.7mm ebay caddy's advert too doesn't show any screw holes. Unusual.

Note: the larger 750GB/1TB 2.5" HDDs are 12.5mm tall. These can be mounted in a 12.7mm caddy. There is 2mm play which the caddy's base occupies..