2nd hdd caddy in dvd bay sata or pata.

I just found these on ebay. If they have already been mentioned, I couldn't find it by searching. They are a hard drive caddy installed in the dvd drive bay. They come in either ide or sata. 12.7mm drive height. They use the standard JAE 50 connector, so they can replace whatever optical drive you have. About $20.00 straight from China. What a simple way to add a huge and cheap sata drive to a older laptop. For all the more I actually use my dvd, I can pull it on my CF 50 and install a 2nd hard drive. Maybe even use one of these instead of the original hard drive. I know they are not shock proof, but it's a great alternative for those of use not really needing the ability to drop our laptop from 3 stories up. Would work really great to swap on those toughbooks with removable optical drives. I make get one just to use for hard drive upgrades. Easy to clone a drive with this.


Drive caddies

Drive caddy

 

See DIY: Adding SSD or HDD storage using an optical bay caddy

 

I saw it as well and it appears that it might work if you replace a CD/DVD drive in the caddy with this, but haven't tried it yet.

 

I replaced the optical drive in my Macbook with a 500GB drive. It's used as bulk storage that offsets the small size of the 160GB SSD that I use as a boot disk.

It's a useful mod. I use the extra space every day but almost never used the optical drive.

 

Shawn, that was something similar to the two IDE/SATA adapters I received from Teo but was planning to experiment with extra FDD caddies instead.

Oh well... if it's 20 shipped, maybe I'd give it a go but... it's just plug & play, right? Don't see any mention of master/slave setting!
Ron in SG

 

If you need to hardset slave mode, look at the newmodeus caddy with a master/slave jumper. The ebay caddy has no jumper, and at least on the 2510P won't play nice with another drive set as master. The ebay caddy can be forced to master only. See more details and comparison of these caddies here.

 

They are $20.00 to $25.00 shipped, so I figure it's cheap enough to experiment with. As far as master / slave setting, pata 2.5 drives have a jumper don't they? At least the IBM and Toshiba drives I have setting here do. Sata may be a problem, but I figured if my CF-50 can be set to boot from the optical drive, then I would be able to put in a huge low cost sata drive and set the bios to boot from it.
I would love to eliminate my floppy drive on my CF 50 and put a hard drive in place of it, but I haven't figured out how yet. Maybe using a cable from a CF 48 Ls 120 super disk? Any help on that one?
Does the caddy / adapter have anything to do with the actual master / slave setting? Isn't that the drive itself? I know you can flash optical drives to change the master / slave setting. On my old HP XE2, it needs both drives to be masters in order to boot from the optical drive or the hard drive.
I am guessing how the bios is programmed may have a bit to do with it. If the bios has 2 channels the both drives being masters is required to boot. If the bios has one channel then you would need one drive to be slave in order for them to play nice. My XE2 obviously had 2 channels and hence needed both drives as master.

Shawn

 

Remember If you use one of these in a CF-27/CF-28/CF-29 CD/DVD caddy you will have to solder a jumper at R2 on the PCB board at the back of the caddy to force the drive to master if the computer will not read the drive. Then you will probably have to change the boot order in the bios to boot from your preferred drive. For all you not familiar with a Toughbook, the Toughbook is expecting a CD/DVD drive that is set to master.

 

Just need to connect pin45+pin47 as shown below to set the ebay caddy to master:

 

Won't be a problem with cf-27/28/29; you make that mod in the caddy, not the drive. The $14 one should work fine.

mnem
Where's muh d@mn ice cream?

 

If you search for DVD to Hard Drive... You will find several ways to do this.... But R2 must be soldered as mentioned. I used to have some links... Let me check...

EDIT - HERE was one of them... I never checked it out though....

 

What?
Please elaborate. What did you have to do?

 

It's really easy. I used one of these

http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

They're more expensive than the cheap ones on EBay, but I didn't want to waste any time. I preferred to get something I knew would work with my Macbook.

You open up the Macbook, take out the internal slot-loading optical drive, and install the adapter with your disk on it.

 

$99.00 plus $10.41 shipping?

Holy F#$&ing @$$crackers!

You could have the whole schmeer, WITH a 320GB HDD for that!

*Shakes his head*

mnem
not.

 

Yep. I knew it was expensive, but the vendor guaranteed it would be compatible with my particular system. That is essentially what I was paying for.

If you have time and resourcefulness, you can definitely do it cheaper.

 

I got one of the ones off of ebay for my sata drive, I will let you know what I think when it gets here in a couple of weeks LOL.

 

I have a sata WD 320gb in an Ebay system, works fine
No need to mod the caddy, they work as master

 

denrosten... Are you saying that you have a 160GB main drive and a 320GB secondary drive?

 

Yep, and working perfect.
I bought this caddy http://cgi.benl.ebay.be/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220503626821

The Hd i put inside is a WD sata 320 Gb

I had modified the caddy first (R2 soldering), but it did not work, so i unsoldered, et voila

 

Great info! Rep to you!

 

Thanks, but is was really trial and error

 

Thanks denrosten from proving that this works, I will now be able to carry all my data!

 

I knew it had to work... We've been talking about this since the CF-28 was the newest, used whiz-bang thing and we were modding it. Everyone wanted the 2nd hard drive. Links were posted but nobody ever did anything or tried it.

I'm glad you did... Kind of cool... Though I think my 320GB will work well enough for me now. But nice to know I can mod in something for extra, extra storage if'n I need it.

 

Like many items before it, perhaps we should purchase one or two of these before someone figures out how well they work and bump the price. Of course, since the Chinese are manufacturing them, there's not much chance of that.

 

Beware, you still need an empty caddy to do this, and those ones are harder to find
I got the chance to buy a CF 27 with cd for 30 $

 

I have always thought that was the back door way of obtaining a caddy, even cheaper than the caddy by itself at times.

 

Rats! I had not thought about that!

However, since, it is intended for a Dell, I guess that you could use a Dell caddy? That and the HDD adapter would seem to be all that you need without actually seeing it.

 

You really need a cd caddy to do this, in fact the Ebay thing is a plastic adapter for the hd that looks like a internal cd.

 

I guess that I have something wrong with the way I have it visualized in my head. It is not making sense for me, yet.

 

Now... before you guys hound after me, what's your thoughts on using the FDD caddy instead of the CDD caddy, which as everybody knows, is less common and more expensive.

Given that it's the same physical docking connection internally (ie. when slotted into place), it should work... provided the electrical/electronic connections are the same as well (which I do not know enough). What I do know is that both caddies will allow boot, read and write.

I've not had time to fiddle with the 2 IDE>SATA adapters from Teo but if there isn't much going on this week, I'd probably toy around some.

My intention is not so much of additional HDD space and the FDD-modded-HDD won't spend much time in the TB. It's more for redundancy, to have a cloned OS + data at hand, in case anything happens.

Ideas, suggestions, opinions please... but... lemme get into 'em flame retardant suit before y'all turn up the heat!!

Ron in SG

 

I would have to take one apart again to make sure, but I am thinking the internal connection in the floppy caddy is different (not the same ribbon cable). But I could be wrong....I will look today and see.

 

i was thinking, you can get the ribbon cables for the cd modules off ebay for a few bucks. cant you simply hook it up to the rest of the floppy module and therefor making it a cd caddy? i wa looking at the master mods for the dvd and saw this pic :

these i mean : http://cgi.ebay.ca/Toughbook-CF-48-...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item5ad4e7ded4

if its stupid never mind, i've never even seen a toughbook fdd module in real life.

 

Uh..... No... You cannot convert the floppy to DVD or CD Rom.... Therefore you cannot use the floppy for the extra drive.

I mean.. You MIGHT be able to... But then you also might be able to hammer a Porsche out of a VW if you spent the time doing it.... But why not just use the right parts?

 

Naaahh... first off, your CF-48 bit is not only the wrong connector, it is the wrong half of the connector, so it's like trying to stick the business end of one philips-head screwdriver against the business end of another & expecting to turn it.

I figured this all out AGES AGO... it simply is a boatload of @ssache to save a few dollars; actually, more like a week's tinkering to save less than half a day's wages.

See here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=372571&highlight=mnem+floppy+caddy

mnem
NOT Floppy.

 

i didnt notice it was for the cf-48. anyway as i said never mind the post then, it was a stupid idea.

 

Here is a picture of the hd showing in the bios

I noticed a remarkable slowdown at start up, once in windows there is no slow down

 

I got mine in the mail today and I must say it is very well manufactured and after I jumped R2 it working perfectly.

As Denrosten stated it does slow down the boot time.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330402657427&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

 

It my experience, most times extra HDDs have that effect on most systems.

 

What holds the adapter in place?

Is there enough friction to stop it disconnecting from the MP connector?

 

You mount it like a cd or dvd
Use the little metal bracket from the original cd and it will screw together like an original cd

 

If you are asking what I think you are asking, the adapter needs to be mounted inside a TB CD caddy in place of the CD/DVD drive.

 

Correct ( that is what i wanted to say, but i have sometimes difficulty's with the language )

 

You said it fine, we were just typing at about the same time.
Your post was not there when started my reply, but popped up when I posted.

 

Thanks. That's exactly what I wanted to know.

 

Has anyone tried this on a CF-51 or CF-73? Would not need the caddy, just the frame and the quick release. Wondering which size would fit. Any suggestions!

 

My main HDD connector (on motherboard) is broken. Can i use HDD in this dvd caddy as main boot drive?

 

You didn't give us your model number....

 

Can your laptop boot from a dvd or cd? If it can, then I would imagine as long as the caddy is setup as a master, it would boot from the drive.

Shawn

 

Resurrected by somewhat popular demand. Driller that is. This works in my CF 51. I had to solder the 2 pins together to force it as Master. I have not tried it to boot, but I bet it will as the bios shows it as an IDE device not a cd/dvd.