GUIDE: Replacing optical drive bay on Portege R835-P56X with HDD Caddy

This was originally in the hdd/ssd thread but I felt that it would be better if it had gotten it's own thread.

I was able to remove the optical drive bay on the R835 and replace it with a hard drive. This is ideal for people who don't need the optical drive bay and are interested in SSDs. Since SSDs are quite expensive and the sizes currently available are small compared to regular hdds, having a second hard drive is ideal. This is a great solution to add extra space to a laptop that is equipped with an SSD.

Materials Needed before hand:
2 phillips screw drivers (one for the big screws and other for the tiny ones) (preferably magnetized or just stick a magnet piece on it to magnetize it)
9.5mm HDD caddy
HDD


Warning: I do not take responsibility for any broken laptops/drives/broken fingers etc. Do this at your own risk. Be sure to take any antistatic precautions when handling any of the internal laptop components.

This guide assumes that you have already installed the SSD and would like to use the extra hard drive in the optical drive bay. It also assumes you are comfortable working on computers and know not to randomly touch stuff when the laptop is open.


Installing ODD Caddy for Toshiba R835-P56X (I do not know if this works for R830, R835-P50x, R835-P55x but there's a high possibility it should):

I ordered the DV22 caddy off ebay. It was around $16. There is a DV21 caddy and it should work as well (it just has different color schemes).
NEW SATA 2nd HDD Hard Drive Caddy 9.5mm Universal DV22 | eBay

First unplug the power cord from the laptop.
Flip the laptop and remove the battery: There are two latches.

Now with the laptop still flipped, orient the laptop so that the battery compartment is facing away from you.

Unscrew the 20 or so screws with appropriate screw driver (I used one from a Glasses repair kit+a magnet).
-You will notice there are three panels in middle. You will have to unscrew those since they hide additional screws underneath.
-One of those panels give access to the ram, the other for the hdd, and the smaller one I don't know.

Now after you have unscrewed all the screws, you can now slowly open the laptop from left to right (with battery compartment still facing away from you).
This should be done very gently and it should come off easily (if not you may need to check if you unscrewed everything). There will be some slight resistance as you lift it up since there will be foam padding underneath the bottom cover.

After you have gotten the bottom cover off, you will be staring at the inner workings of your laptop. You will notice the Optical drive is in the lower left corner of the laptop. Gently lift the drive but take note that it is still attached to the SATA connector by 2 screws. Remove the screws and gently remove the SATA connector from the back of the drive.

After that you should be able to take out your optical drive. You will note there are 3 separate brackets screwed into each of the sides of the drive.

Optical Drive taken out
(NOTE: Top and Right Brackets were removed in the picture)

These brackets hold the drive in place when it is in the laptop and you will remove these for later usage.

Picture of where Brackets should be from side
Brackets of Top/Right/Bottom on the Optical Drive

Also the front bezel is removable by gently prying it off (had the bezel facing me and I pried from right to left).
Bezel removal

Preparing the HDD CADDY

Now with the DV22 (DV21) caddy in hand, install the HDD (not going into details here since you should be able to do this). After installing the hdd and securing it with the provided screws, you will need to remove the top cover of the HDD caddy. It is held by 3 screws on the top. Unscrew those and remove the top cover. The top cover serves no purpose and it prevents the caddy from sitting flush within the laptop.
Remove the bezel from the caddy and replace it with the one you just removed from the original optical drive.


Now install the brackets onto the caddy. The screw holes on the caddy are off by 1-2 mm from the original optical drive. The only allows you to install some of the brackets. Note: you do not need to install all the brackets just some so that the drive is secured into the laptop. I was able to install 2 of the 3 brackets. With the caddy face down and bezel side facing to the left, the brackets I was able to install was:
(a) the right side bracket underneath the SATA connector and (b) the top side bracket (toward the usb 3.0 port). One thing you should note is that the right side bracket should not tightened all the way and should be a little loose so there is flexibility when installing the drive.

Now that you have caddy with the hdd and brackets installed, you can connect the SATA connector ribbon screw in just enough to hold the connector in place. And gently place it into the laptop. Make sure the right side bracket loops through the plastic nub that is on the laptop body there and that the holes of the bracket align with the screw holes of the laptop body. There is some wiggling room but the most important part is to make sure the caddy sits flush and that the holes of the brackets align.

After this, you are done. Put back the bottom cover of the laptop. Going from right (VGA port side) to left (USB3.0 side) and screw the bottom cover and you are finished.

Enjoy and I will add in the pictures later.

 

the portege r830 series is very nice no doubt. However, look at the cooling design for it. An extremely thin heatsink for the cpu and no heatsink for the gpu. I am not sure what toshiba is thinking. IMO, anyway. My first laptop is a satellite u205s. When I run prime it shutdowns after around 20 minutes. However, everything else is solid. If Toshiba wants me to be their customer their engineer team has to do a better job.

 

Thanks again for the guide. I'm going to be attempting the same project as soon as my stuff arrives in the mail. I'll post pictures.

 

I'm confused. The GPU is within the CPU package on the Intel Core i series CPUs.

My view is that Toshiba have used normal CPU chips and accept throttling to stay within thermal limits rather than pay extra for the ULV CPUs (which would mean higher price for the customers). We are going off-topic but see my post here.

John

 

I see your point but this is the way it has been done. Intel wants to get money and a i3/i5/i7 CPU will produce max 10 Watt more than a ULV CPU ( same range). Its a marketing trick.
Many manufacturors do this. The chips in the;
middle of the wafer = high quality ( can be clocked high with less voltage)
around the middle = can be clocked high with standard voltage
at the edge of the wafer = can be clocked high with more voltage ( unrealistic); or can be underclocked and a little bit undervolted for weak ULV CPU´s.

 

I'm also confused as well to his post... I thought the GPU was on the same die as the CPU. Unless he's talking about some other chip...

 

guessing he's on about the southbridge chip which i believe is still in use on core i series enabled chipsets isn't it?

 

Quick question, by adding an SSD (along with a regular HD), does that increase power consumption to a noticable amt?

 

Take a look at Tom's Hardware 2.5" HDD and 2.5" SSD charts. They include power consumption measurements under various operating conditions. Depending on what you are doing the additional power consumption is likely to be between 0.5W and 2W which represents about 10% to 20% additional system power consumption (depending on what power consumption you are getting at present).

John

 

photos?


I'm curious to see what the caddy looks like from the outside. Does the caddy feature the same non-rectangular form as the OD door?

The ebay photos look rectangular to me, so I'm guessing there is some nasty protrusion when installed...

 

You can change the bezel (OD door) to the front of the caddy. There is little to no difference with the caddy and it sits flush with the laptop. Skeletron has pics in his guide as well and mine are flush along with his installation. Only visible difference is from the bottom view.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/tos...ll-ssd-replace-odd-hdd-portege-r835-p56x.html

 

Is there any problem with doing this with an R830? The difference is an Expresscard slot below the DVD; the DVD itself looks the same, but I am not sure if it is 0.5mm thinner or there is some other obstruction.

R835 above, R830 below

 

It should work but I cannot guarantee it since I haven't taken apart an R830 so I do not know. Perhaps someone can chime in with an R830 model.

 

Check the optical drive thickness. My R700 has the ExpressCard slot under the optical drive which is a 7mm thick "superslim" model. The drive bezel looks very similar to that in the R830 photo here.

John

 

Ouch. I haven't bought the R830 yet and maybe now I won't.

They do make 7mm hard drives, but I don't know if they make 7mm caddies that would work.

 

I disassembled the R830, and it has a 9.5mm SATA optical drive, Panasonic UJ8A2 EBTJ3-T (listed in Device Manager as a Matsh*ta UJ8A2ES).

 

Nice, good luck with the install.

 

I am thinking of putting SSD in the caddy...

Does anyone know if the DVD drive SATA interface is of the same speed as the HDD interface ?

 

Both are SATA II even though the Portege is capable of SATA III, Toshiba disabled it.

 

Yesterday I tried to install a 9.5mm caddy (DV22) in my p55x and it's too thick (when I measure DVD drive it's only 6.5mm thick) and also the shape doesn't match up with the case (didn't have the right tools to cut off extra part from caddy to match up to the case.

Are there thinner caddys around ?

 

Install went fine on R830; even lined up all three brackets with screws through judicious use of needle-nose pliers.

Incidentally, the Expresscard reader is attached to the bottom cover of the R830, making things a little harder. But it isn't necessary to detach the ribbon cable; the cover can be moved to the right and left there while still attached.

Now the question is, what happens to the 3-year warranty?

Another question: where do the five shorter screws go? I wasn't keeping track when I unscrewed them

 

If the 5 screws are what I think they are, they should go in the holes where there is a marking next to them ("F4" or something).

 

Dear Skeleton and everyone,
Recently, I bought a Toshiba Protege R830 with 128 SSD. I have 256 GB SSD from Samsung and I would like to upgrade. But when I checked the SSD cable, I found out that the interface was totally different from the interface of Samsung SSD. Samsung SSD's interface is the same like other regular 2.5" SSD. The interface of the 128 GB SSD comes with R830 is very small. I would like Skeleton or anybody who knows about this help me and what can I do so I can use the Samsung 2.5" 256 GB SSD in Protege R830. Or, at least find a cable that is the same like Skeleton's.

Thank you.
Geoffrey

 

Does the stock SSD use micro SATA or something? I'm guessing you need an SATA to Micro SATA adapter.

 

Why does the main thread regarding this subject state:


" Improve performance and extend battery life using a hybrid SSD+HDD system. A small, fast SSD hosts your os and apps in your primary bay. A 2.5" HDD in optical bay caddy, in battery-efficient spindown mode when inactive, provides a decent sized data repository."



I looked up toms hardware but I am still confused as to whether or not I will be saving battery power, experiencing no difference, or should be expecting more power consumption and therefore less battery life.

For people who have done this already what does your experience with the laptop show?

Thanks

 

I don't have first-hand experience of a dual drive setup but have been an SSD user for a couple of years. My understanding is that an SSD is able to drop down to low power mode much faster than an HDD so if index and log files (and all the other bits and pieces that programs keep writing) all go onto the SSD then the HDD can spend significant periods being powered down.

There are various sources of data about SSD power usage and some show quite high power consumptions but, if the SSD is shifting data at twice the rate of an HDD, then even a 50% increase in maximum power would mean less energy used because the task will be finished sooner.

John

 

Thanks for the info!

 

Just a heads-up for those searching the forums. This DOES work with the Portege R705. I added a few more details to the other instructions thread.

Everything works great. I just wonder about the optical disk drive power on/off utility. I don't want it messing with the normal HDD power settings in windows....

PS: Thanks to those of you who posted instructions. Very helpful!

 

I waited patiently and on Cyber Monday I bought a Kingston 64GB SSD for $40! Now I finally did my install, the guide was great and helped walk me through the entire process. Also I was able to get all 3 brackets on to the DV22 caddy. I did this on my R835-P56x.
Thanks!

 

Awesome guide. I followed the guide step by step to install a 60 GB Kingston SSDNow Sata 3 on my Portege R835-P75 and hardware wide, everything went fine. My idea is to install Ubuntu on the SSD and the /home files on the HDD. I started the Ubuntu installation and all I can see is the good old HDD hard, not mentioning to the new SSD hard. Any ideas why did this problem occur and any tips on how to solve it?

Thanks in advance