Issues after adding second hard drive in XPS 1340

Hey there. I have an XPS 1340 that I tried adding a second hard drive to so that I could use a smaller SSD in the primary bay. On newmodeus.com, there is a caddy for about 40 bucks that is apparently designed for my specific model. I purchased my drive caddy through Amazon for about $16. The thing is, it was marked as a caddy designed for a Macbook Pro. However, the model of Macbook that they designed it for uses the same type of optical drive as my XPS 1340.

After installing the secondary HDD in the optical bay, it was detected properly in the BIOS. When Windows 7 booted, I could browse the files just fine. However, I would notice a stutter in the OS about 1-2 minutes apart. For instance, when I would play music from the second HDD, the music would stutter periodically. Even when I wasn't accessing the drive, the system would stutter; the mouse would freeze for about half a second, but it occurs frequently enough to be very annoying.

A peak into the event log shows a continuous error as follows:

nvstor64: data error on device.

The error was specific to the secondary hard drive. I id a checkdisk with the repair option, and it claimed to repair bad sectors. The thing is, I never had these problems until I placed the drive in the secondary slot with the optical caddy.

Could anyone provide any insight? Could this caddy be bogus? Was I wrong to assume the Macbook caddy would work? For now, the drive is removed and the system operates error free. Any advice would be very appreciated.

 

could be an issue with the SATA connector

 

Are you referring to the removable connector between the optical drive and the motherboard?

Ie, this thing? http://e-merrilltech.com/images/products/55691.jpg

 

yes. The easiest test would be to swap them out and see if your problems go away. I've had this issue before and it turned out to be a bad SATA cable in my desktop. At the least you will eliminate the connector

 

Check the SMART status for the hard drive. You might be suffering from CRC errors and read/write errors indicative of a bad connection.

 

That's a good idea. I'll have to check into that. Know of any ways to test throughput besides replacing the $15 connector? Any types of tests that can be run to verify data transfer efficiency? I put the HDD in my desktop computer and it has no issues, so I get the feeling it's either the connector, the optical caddy, or maybe my mobo on my laptop. Argh... computers, can't live with em, can't live without em.

 

So I did a chkdsk /r on my laptop hard drive while it was connected to my desktop computer via SATA connector. Unfortunately, it is still saying there's 256k bad sectors. What I'm curious about is whether this is likely a fluke that occurred coincidentally at the same type that I placed it in the optical caddy, or if instead the optical caddy could possibly cause the bad sectors. I fear buying another hard drive if I'm just setting myself up for failure. Any thoughts? Could an incompatible caddy cause bad sectors?