Looking for info about the Ultrabay SATA Adapter

I'm a HP nx9420 owner who's looking for a HD adapter for the DVD bay ( HP Multibay II). Unfortunately, HP doesn't sell a separate adapter, they can only be purchased with a 60 or 80 GB IDE HD installed.

The Ultrabay SATA adapter looks very interesting since it would allow me to use my current HD in it, but the big question is if it will fit and work properly?
Thinkwiki doesn't look reliable since they claim that it supports fewer models (maybe just not updated?) than Lenovo says.


1 - The adapter uses a SATA to IDE adapter, right? Or does these Lenovo laptops use SATA DVD's? I've been searching, but so far it looks like they use IDE DVD's (and I've never seen a slim SATA DVD).

2 - I have to confirm that the adapter fits physically. My HP uses a standard 12.7 mm LG DVD writer now, which I guess fits the current Lenovo models (except the models with a 9.5 mm bay).

3 - It seems that the adapter have some limited compatibility even with Lenovo laptops, any ideas why? I'm not expecting hotswapping to work for me.


Thanks!

 

Perhaps if you can find the HP part number you can look on eBay or the internet.

 

Inside the ultrabay slot are 3-4 main connectors that pass the following connections:

IDE
SATA
Serial/Parallel (Native)
Power

The current lineup of Thinkpad optical drives are all IDE based at the moment, leaving just SATA being pushed with the latest models for use on the extra hard drives. I really doubt that anything for that bay would be cross compatible between different brands.

Your best bet might be finding the hardware manual off HP for your laptop, looking for the external drive bay, and seeing if you can purchase that separately as a warranty replacement part.

 

dietcokefiend: Thanks! That's exactly what I needed to know. I thought it was a SATA-IDE converter in the adapter, but since it's not there's no reason for me to look further. But it's a bit strange that the connector is placed on the same spot as a standard (IDE) DVD like mine, and it looks like the same type of connector. I guess the reason is that Lenovo have reused the pics from the IDE adapter guide.