Using Ultrabay Hard drive adaptor with a 3.5" DESKTOP hard drive?

I was wondering if the SATA Ultrabay hard drive adaptor would work with a full sized, 3.5" HDD. I know the drive won't physically fit, but if I connect the power and SATA cables from the desktop 3.5" 7200 RPM drive to the connectors on the Ultrabay adaptor (maybe I'd have to cut a hole for the cables), does anyone know if the desktop drive will work as an external through the adaptor? Or, if the bay adaptor won't power a full sized desktop HDD, will it work if I connect the HDD to an external power source while having it plugged in to the bay adaptor via SATA cable?


This is the ultrabay adaptor I'm talking about:
Link

My T61 doesn't have expresscard, so this is basically my only way of connecting an external HDD with faster transfer speeds than USB.

Thanks

 

It might work. However, I would be concerned about the power draw of the HDD. Most 2.5" drives are between 0.8 and 1.5 watts at idle and 3-5 watts at max draw. Conversely, a 3.5" drive is usually 5-9 watts at idle and 8-15 watts at max draw.

If you try this I would highly suggest opting for a more energy efficient drive such as the WD10EADS (Green Power) or Samsung EcoGreen F2 as their power character isn't too far off from a notebook drive.

However, to a degree I must question the whole idea behind this endeavour. You can get a 2.5" HDD with capacities of up to 500GB at the moment and you can TAKE IT WITH YOU CLEANLY. If you need more than 500GB of external storage I suggest you look into a NAS or other type device.

 

Just called up lenovo, the guy over tech support said that he tried it himself at some point and that it does work, but the bay adaptor itself will not power a full sized 3.5" drive.

He said if I could find an external power source for the HDD, then it should work.

The reason I want to try this is because an ultrabay SATA adaptor only costs around $20, and I've already got a 640GB WD6400AAKS (quite a fast drive) in an USB 2.0 enclosure. Instead of spending the money on a NAS, I'm thinking this would be a cheap way to make an eSATA setup.

Any1 know where I can find a molex power brick?

 

I'd just spend $50 on an enclosure that does esata...but if you want to play around go for it.

 

That sounds about right. The WD6400AAKS is a very good drive (I have 4 of them ). However, it does not have the lowest power requirements.

If this is the way you want to go I think a AC - DC adapter with a molex plug and 5v/12v outputs ( like this) should do the trick. However, I've never tried this with an HDD and can't guarantee that it won't cause problems.

 

What the tech dude told you is probably correct. The reason is because 2.5" drives require a 5V power source whereas the 3.5" drives require 12V. If you take a look at the pinout for the SATA cables, you will notice that there are pins reserved for 3.3V, 5V, and 12V. So in a laptop, the 12V pin would most likely be missing so you would need your own power source. The data interface, however, should be identical. So as the techie said, all you should need is your own DC power source.

 

Can go a cheap ebay pcmcia e-sata to get > 70MB/s as opposed to USB's 30MB/s.

2510P owner benched a Mtron SSD delivering 70MB/s using a VIA-chipset pcmcia e-sata card here. Thinkpad owner got 83MB/s using a OCZ Core SSD and e-sata Silicon Image "Sil3512" chipset pcmcia as shown here. The mtron can otherwise do ~98MB/s, so there was some speed capping.

There are some Thinkpads that give 12MB/s that use the Ricoh cardbus R5C847 chips. A bios update corrects this.

 

Thanks guys. I decided to pick up an ultrabay SATA adaptor to try it with my WD6400 AAKS.

Also just happened to pick up a 64GB SuperTalent MasterDrive SX SSD along the way . Supposedly it's a rebranded OCZ Summit, which is an excellent SSD.

 

Doesn't your T61 have a Cardbus slot? Why not use a cardbus eSATA adapter and an eSATA enclosure?