SSD in optical bay on laptop??

Opinions on this? I noticed there is disagreement between resellers who put SSD's in the optical bay and resellers who claim that an SSD will be bottlenecked by the connector in an optical bay.

Specifically, I am wondering about msi laptops, although I imagine it will be the same answer for most gaming laptops.

Is it true that SSD's under-perform if they are installed in an optical bay?

 

Some ODD bays are SATAII, some are SATAIII, so it depends on which model of laptop you're talking about. If it's SATAIII, then there won't be a performance difference between putting a SSD int he ODD bay and putting a SSD in the main HDD bay.

Personally, I'd put the SSD in the main HDD regardless of what the OD connector is using. It's "tradition", and if you decide to switch out the ODD DVD drive with a ODD HDD (or vice versa), then your OS/programs aren't affected since you won't be removing the SSD from the system every time you want to use the DVD drive.

 

Well, the msi GT70 laptop has a SATA III connector in the ODD bay, according to the manufacturer. However, the reseller is telling me he doesn't recommend putting an SSD in the ODD bay because he can visually see that the connector is different from the primary and secondary data storage bays.

Swapping back and forth between an ODD and SSD is a non-issue, because I have my old laptop for reading DVD's.

 

might i just ask why would you do that when you have the option of putting it in the main HDD bay, also, from my sig you'll realise the 15mm drives will still fit the ODD so it will be a non-issue

don't know if your too afraid of opening up the laptop but it is highly unlikely that you'll break something during the swap unless you are doing something completely retarded such as putting a glass of liquid or cigarette right next to the machine/in your mouth

 

I'm not worried about opening up the laptop.

I have just ordered an msi GT70 2OC with an SSD in the primary storage bay, the secondary storage bay is empty (to accommodate a future SSD or mSATA's when I can afford it) and the ODD will be swapped out for an HDD.

However, by ordering the SSD in the primary HDD bay, that means I will be losing stock software setup (OS installation and msi drivers) and I will have to do install all that stuff once I get the unit, which involves a lot of waiting around. That is why I'm wondering whether I should have left the primary HDD bay as is and put the SSD in the ODD bay instead of putting an HDD there.

But regardless of my circumstances and reasons, I still want to know whether it is technically feasible to have an SSD in the ODD bay.

Also, I don't know what you mean by 15mm drives. I'm not familiar with sizes. The only size I know is 2.5' for SSD.

 

i'm not catching your point, only stuff stored inside the SSD gets the performance boost, regardless of which bay you put the drive at, and by ordering the SSD+HDD setup from resellers I'm pretty sure they'll be sensible enough to install the operating system and programs into the SSD whilst letting you use the HDD for media file storage

stock software setup from MSI also includes a huge amount of bloatwares that slows down by system, as a matter of fact my friend's thinkpad comes loaded with bloatwares for me to cleanup the mess

it takes about 15 minutes to install the OS from scratch, about 30 minutes to install all the drivers and useful software either downloaded from the MSI website or from the utilities disk provided, by that you'll be sure to get a fairly clean computer for use, and useful MSI software ONLY consists of the KLM, CSM, vga overclock tool, all other preloaded BS'es are just there either for you to purchase or to slow down your computer intentionally(same for the thinkpad, the preloaded lenovo utilities do not provide help at all and most can be uninstalled for snappier OS response without any compromises)

 

I know that only stuff stored on the SSD gets the performance boost. What I'm trying to ask is whether the read and write speeds of an SSD plugged into an ODD bay will be the same as an SSD plugged into an HDD bay. That is, if the OS and games are installed on an SSD, will there be any performance difference whether that SSD is plugged into an HDD bay or ODD bay? The manufacturer claims that the ODD bay has a SATA III connector, but the reseller is telling me that this isn't true.

Bear in mind that your estimate of 15 minutes to install all that stuff doesn't take into account the fact that I won't have an optical drive. So I will have to take my Windows CD's and get their contents set up on an external hard drive.

 

Didn't read what cpu/platform you have, but install your Windows O/S to a USB drive and have the install finished in ~5 minutes.

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...ternal-one-need-work-win7-hp.html#post9289767


I would not install an SSD to the ODD bay - too many horror stories and too much chance of it running in crippled mode (assuming it doesn't have any other glitches that will make you blame everything else except the ODD bay it's installed in (and the possibly/probably inferior adaptor you'll need to purchase).

If you want a two storage device setup: put the HDD in the ODD slot - the performance won't matter much (if at all) even if it runs at SATAII speeds.


Good luck.