Product Review: Optical Bay to HDD Bay Converter for Lenovo e420 (others supported)

I'm sure many of you are considering purchasing a Solid State Drive (SSD) for your laptop. The benefits of SSD's are great and include incredible speed while booting and using Windows. Unfortunately, with 64GB at around $100, they are still fairly expensive and very few can afford to purchase an SSD large enough to use as their only hard drive. Fortunately, a product from newModeus.com has solved this problem allowing for the installation of a second hard drive via the sacrifice of a DVD drive.

Perhaps losing the optical drive is not for everyone but others will hardly miss it and of course there is the option of using your DVD drive externally. (newModeus.com included a USB to SATA converter cable with my adapter, but it is not mentioned on their website and I am not sure if it is standard issue)

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Well, let's get started with the review then, shall we?

Here is a quick shot of the internals of your typical Lenovo E420 laptop:


This particular model features the i5-2410M, a 500GB 7200RPM HDD, and 4GB of DDR3. One important piece of information hidden in this photo is that the only SATA port that supports the full 6GB/s speeds that some SSD's can take advantage of is where the stock hard drive is installed.

After removing the optical drive's single retention screw, you can grip it by the front of the tray and gently pull it out of the machine:


At this point I have already installed the hard drive into the drive adapter. Don't forget to unscrew the bracket from the back of the optical drive and to screw it into the drive adapter like so:


The drive adapter is capable of mating with the optical drive face-plate but I thought I would include a photo of the fit & finish without the factory face-plate installed:


So then I installed the optical drive face-plate onto the drive adapter:


Here are some close-up shots of the fit with the new adapter installed with optical drive face-plate:


I am extremely satisfied with this addition to my system. Before installing this drive adapter the optical drive used to move around a bit when touching/grabbing that side of the laptop. Now that the face-plate is attached to this adapter rather than the movable optical drive tray, it feels much more sturdy.

I can currently boot up in less than 15 seconds and launch larger programs like Photoshop in less than a second. Most importantly, I do not have to worry about running out of hard drive space as I have the 64GB Crucial M4 SSD and a 500GB traditional hard drive.

Here is a LINK to the product page. If you have any questions feel free to ask (I don't work for the company, but I did promise them an unbiased review should they send me one of their products - personally I was surprised that it fit. . . let alone perfectly, securely, and easily).

 

wow i wish i could get one for my v570 that would be perfect

 

You might inquire to the manufacturer to let them know that you are interested. They are constantly adding new models of supported laptops.

 

What did you use to create the pictures? Is the font actually hand written or a font with the picture editing software? They look really good and I need to upgrade my picture editing software.

 

I used a camera. : )

It's just a handwritten font from the internet. Google "cool handwriting fonts"... it was called Estrya-something-or-another.

 

I care less about the font than the technique. Did you use Photoshop or some other product for the edits?

 

If I had to guess, I'd say it was a text layer with a 2px black stroke, and a white/black outer glow at 20% for blending options, then perspective distorted as necessary. Probably under Photoshop or some similar tool.

 

I think that's an important clue.

 

Der, ya think?

I actually didn't read the darn article because it wasn't something I'll be doing but the pictures are pretty good. Certainly way beyond the usual macro crops most people do.

 

Thanks! I appreciate the kind words. I am actually a graphic designer: 6eDesign.net Home Page

As that other guy noted, I did use Photoshop. Also he had a pretty good notion of how I created the text (outline, etc). The photos themselves are simply taken with a Point and Shoot digital camera... nothing fancy (this student cannot afford a DSLR).

These pictures were no big deal though. You could probably use a program like GIMP to accomplish the same effects. The only thing that other individual did not mention was blending modes. Play with them. Oh, and I used the "Vanishing Point" filter within Photoshop to apply the text as if it is written on the laptop components and then blending modes to make it blend with the photo better. Really nothing fancy, if you are interested in learning you could be making photos like this by the end of the day.

 

Hi! Sorry about this request, but would you have the measurements of the drive caddy? I was planning to buy a similar product but was unsure if it would fit my E420. The seller stated that it was for T400/T500/W500/W700/R400/R500.

Would you also know if the T400 series would have the same specs as the E420?

Thanks!

 

Is this work on Edge 15? Anyone?

 

I'm glad they're offering 2nd hard drive in ODD for next S430 model