Dell Vostro 1700 Interposer / Caddy

Hi, I'm looking to get my hands on the interposer and the caddy for bay 2 , but they are hilariously expensive , and more expensive than the hard disk itself !

Does anyone know a cheaper place to find them , or an alternative to connecting a 2nd HDD ( except having a 'USB tail' attached to my laptop all the time

Cheers !

 

How much is too much? I see plenty of 'em on eBay for about $30; I'm sure Dell charges maybe twice that.

 

Well , with shipping , if I were to get the whole thing ( interposer , caddy , screws ) , it'll be around GBP 35-40 , interposer alone will be much cheaper , but then , what magical force will keep the HDD in place ?

True that Dell will cost more , but isn't it absurd that the connector costs more than the HDD ?

 

In my never ending quest for finding something cheaper , I made a startling discovery , or atleast I thought I did ....

ALl these manufacturers ( Dell , Compaq , HP are the 3 I saw on ebay ) who decided to put a proprietary tiny plastic piece seem to have thought exactly the same . Except for the ends , made of plastic , easily choppable , the hard disk end and the mo-bo end are identical ! ( dont believe me , look at the ebay images for interposers )

Which gives me an idea ...... since Dell parts are hard to find , and its even harder to find a seller who would shop to my country , should I get a cheaper HP interposer and just chop the 2 ends off ?

Suggestions any one ?

 

Chances are it will work. Usually the only differences are small metal protrusions from the caddy which provide tabs for the caddy to be screwed down.
If you wanted to, all you really need is the interposer if there is one, and some sheet metal. You can cut the metal with a set of tinsnips or heavy scissors depending on the metal used. You could probably make yourself a caddy in less than an hour if you wanted to. Just make sure that no metal touches the bottom of the harddrive. The PCB has solder contacts which could ground or short on your caddy.

You could alternatively make it out of plastic too if you wanted.

K-TRON

 

K-Tron , you read my mind .

That was exactly what I was going to do , find the cheapest interposer on the net , and make the caddy out of plastic , then visit a local store and pick up some screws that match HDD 1 screws .

I was just wondering whether I was day dreaming , or all the manufacturers had actually the ( almost ) same interposer !

Thanks for the quick reply
Cheers !

 

IT WORKED ! ! ! YES , IT WORKED ! ! ! I can finally breath easily .

I found a cheaper alternative to this whole issue . Instead of buying the caddy + interoiser from Dell , which would have cost me an insane amount , or buying them from an online manufacturer 'newXXXXXX' , which again woulld've cost me almost $40 ( including shipping ) , I found a cheaper alternative .

I bought an interposer from a very famous online auction site m which is identical in pin layout , but meant for HP DV6000 V6000 ( just search it on 'th-e bay' )

And it worked like magic . In my enthusiasm , I just used the packing material from the interposer between the HDD and the HDD cover , but I will build a caddy from plastic soon .

So there you have it , an 8 dollar alternative to an $ 40 issue .

Yupee ! ! !

 

Now that I have 2 HDDs in , I thought I'd switch off the 2nd drive , and only use it for backups and to have a OS to fall back . There's this nifty gadget called revosleep ( http://revosleep.realspooky.de/ )

Hope that helps

 

Now that I have 2 HDDs in , I thought I'd switch off the 2nd drive , and only use it for backups and to have a OS to fall back . There's this nifty gadget called revosleep ( http://revosleep.realspooky.de/ )

Hope that helps