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    Power Media Dock: Swap DVD for Blue Ray?

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by naujoks, Jan 21, 2014.

  1. naujoks

    naujoks Notebook Consultant

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    Has anyone ever tried to replace the original DVD drive in a Power Media Dock with a Blue Ray driver?
     
  2. ngvuanh

    ngvuanh Notebook Deity

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    It's just swap out without modification involved, so once you can open the dock, it is easy to replace DVD with Blu-ray drive with slot loading.

    Sent from my SGP312 using Tapatalk
     
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  3. Qwaarjet

    Qwaarjet Notebook Deity

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    yup, easy swap. you could swap it with an SSD/HDD as well if you wish to have an overpriced external drive!
     
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  4. naujoks

    naujoks Notebook Consultant

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    Good to know, thanks for the answers!
    I have already taken out the original DVD drive because of a fault. The SATA connector seems to be different than a normal sized SATA one, and different size than one of an 1.8" micro SATA drive even, so what kind of SSD could one connect to it?
     
  5. Qwaarjet

    Qwaarjet Notebook Deity

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    my bad, I took a quick glance at it when I opened mine and thought it was a sata connection. I guess i should have taken a closer look. I'll open it up again tonight.
     
  6. naujoks

    naujoks Notebook Consultant

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    Oh, it's SATA alright, but not the way we know it! Well, not me at least. Smaller than any other SATA I've seen so far.
     
  7. Qwaarjet

    Qwaarjet Notebook Deity

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  8. naujoks

    naujoks Notebook Consultant

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    Very interesting, didn't even know these existed, but then this is my first venture into the innards of the PMD, and previously I had never bothered trying to remove an internal DVD drive.
    I don't think one would get more than USB3 speeds out of this if one were to connect an SSD to it, but it would be interesting to find out for certain!
     
  9. Qwaarjet

    Qwaarjet Notebook Deity

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    My adapter should arrive on Saturday. I'll benchmark it with a sata II ssd and a sata III ssd and see if there's a difference just for the sake of knowing. Let's see if it saturates the lightpeak connection. If it works in the first place of course.
     
  10. naujoks

    naujoks Notebook Consultant

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    I think if you're getting SATA2 speeds out of it that would be amazing already, let alone SATA3. Lightpeak though, I fear that might be pushing it.
    I replaced my faulty DVD drive with another one from eBay for £10 today. It works ok, which is the main bit, the only problem is that the eject button doesn't work, which is a bit disappointing, but I can still eject DVDs from Windows Explorer, so reasonably happy to get it fixed with little money.
    Now waiting for a Bluray Writer to come up for a good price on eBay!
     
  11. Qwaarjet

    Qwaarjet Notebook Deity

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    Ok, so the adapter didn't work, didn't realize it was M/F. needed M/M. Got an ultrabay adapter and stripped out just the conversion cable. So.... you were right. Very slow speeds as it's in IDE mode. Oh well, at least now we know :D Untitled.png
     
  12. naujoks

    naujoks Notebook Consultant

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    Ah well. But as you say, at least now we know.