Sony S15 2012 Disassembly + ODD Caddy Video Tutorial

This one does NOT require soldering

 

Is it possible to dual boot using the ODD Caddy to HDD drive?

 

Hello, I am considering a 1513 (with no SSD and 1TB HD, in Spain). I have read this interesting thread, and I have a few remaining questions, regarding switching the existing HD into a new SSD, and take out the DVD and put instead the HD:

1. The issue of excess load is apparently solved with the caddy BestDealUK SATA 2nd HDD Hard Drive Caddy for 9.5mm Universal CD / DVD-ROM Optical Bay: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

Is this confirmed?

2. Some users said they heard a "clack" in the HD (in the DVD position) every time the S15 starts. Is this true? Is it dangerous in some sense?

3. How important is the loss of SATA3? I have read that not much.

4. Is the warranty lost? I have read the answer is "no", but is this really true? I can imagine going to Sony if something breaks down, and they telling me to get lost due to the changes I performed to the laptop.

 

I have a windows 7 version s13, and want to toss in an extra HDD, but soldering is not really an option for me.

could those people who didn't require soldering on their caddy's please post some links to where they bought them?

that one from amazon.uk doesn't ship to mainland Europe unfortunately.

 

I have try to put on my SVS1311 the 640HDD on ODD slot
Caddy buy from there 2nd Bay Hard Drive / SSD Drive Caddy SATA vers SATA pour ordinateur portable / Macbook pour disque dur 9,5 mm - Développez votre stockage de données en remplaçant lecteur optique avec ce Caddy: Amazon.fr: Informatique
Its worked a little bit like 1/2 hours max, then somehow the drive dissapear and its not more detected in windows or linux.
SO i have think like the ODD doesnt have enough power for regular 7200Rpm drive, and have try with a msata SSD (3,3V) , drive not detected AT-ALL

Now i have see the thread about the PIN soldedered and something about the fact that the laptop check if a dvd is inserted and if detect/not/receive no response put no power on the ODD slot.
Did you think that why my caddy is no more detected ? I have think a long time that i ed the small cable powering/connecting the odd bay

 

yes please that would really be helpful

 

I have a feeling we wont get a reply, as most people who have sorted it out probably have no real need to revisit this thread. I approached someone via PM and got an ebay link. I will post back here if it works out, but im not 100% on how to look for the CPU problem to make sure.

 

Can you upload a video and show that you've got an SSD installed with no CPU problem? I dont wanna spend money and not have it work. Thanks.

 

BTW, can somebody post a video maybe on how and where to solder? I really wanna get an SSD as my main drive. Thanks.

 

you dont need to switch out the optical bay, if all you want is to put an ssd in.

got my caddy today, if all goes well my HDD will arrive tomorrow and i can give it a whirl. Will post on whether that ebay caddy gives CPU issues

how to check for that BTW? just look at task manager for any odd spikes in the CPU usage bar?

 

if system cpu usage is above 5.0% or even worse in its teens then there's definatly some usage going on

 

Allrighty fellas i just installed a western digital scorpio blue 1tb in my S13 and i have a few things to report

first of all, I used a HDD caddy from ebay (shout out to user kiowa for the link) with the ebay listing number: 320899676143 (google it for the link). This caddy is confirmed by kiowa, and now myself, for giving NO CPU ISSUES

Looking at task manager, my cpu usage fluxuated around 0-1% and occasionally spiked when i clicked on something, same as before i installed the caddy. This was done in speed mode by the way.. Screenshot: http://i.imgur.com/HFM3Tae.jpg

Second of all, for the S13, when pulling apart the keyboard panel from the laptop frame, there is one VERY IMPORTANT step that is different from the 15 inch model. I had difficulties prying mine apart and almost broke my headphone jack and some of the connecting clips, as well as spent 10 minutes trying to click it back on when i was done installing the caddy, untill i realized what was the issue.

On the S15, the felt optical slit cover (mentioned in wizzardxexe's youtube video at this mark needs to be unscrewed to be removed. HOWEVER, on the S13, it just unlocks if you slide it down in the direction away from the screen. This actually needs to be done BEFORE you even start to pry off the keyboard panel from the front of the laptop as it also locks some of the connecting clips of the keyboard panel in place. This slider is accessible after removing the battery on the right side of the empty battery bay. You can just see the corner of the slider, and can easily be opened (and closed again after you reattach the keyboard panel at the end). So for the S13 you actually slide it open before prying the keyboard panel off, and then only slide it closed once the panel is back on.

here is a photo of the slider in a closed state: http://i.imgur.com/lqU2ZIB.jpg

and here it is after being slid open: http://i.imgur.com/tKc92SD.jpg

 

so just tried it using it on S151290X windows 8 now i have two problems though 1. yes i have the cpu ussage problem 2. windows 8 doesnt recognized the hdd i even went into device manager any info what could be the problem?

the hdd caddy i bought Amazon.com : SATA 2.5" / 9.5mm 2nd Hard Disk Drive Caddy Adapter Special Designed For Apple macbook pro (13, 15, 17) SuperDrive MB466LL/A MB207LL/A MB470LL/A MB226LL/A MB724LL/A MB375LL/A : Computers & Accessories : Computers & Accessories
and dont buy cpu ussage unless you know how to u do some techi stuff.

 

nice can u post the link for the ebay caddy please? i was unsuccessful :/

 

Is this a windows 8 s13?

 

nameajh: Did you enable the disk in disk manager? I had to do that before it showed up in My Computer. its step 5 on this list

alternately, did you ever disable your optical drive in Bios? I did this and forgot I had, took me a minute to realize i had forgotten to reenable it.

2nd SATA HDD SSD Hard Drive Bay Caddy for Laptops 9 5mm | eBay
It worked for me, and Kiowa. However there are no guarantees obviously. Its a large dealer, so it may be only this batch or he may start shipping a different type after a while. who knows.


shaquilleoneal : This was a windows 7 unit.

 

It doesn't even show it in the bios i double check that it's all the way inn which is the weird part but imma still mess with it and yes I formatted it before I did everything I never disabled the optical drive so it can't be that:/ but thanks for the link imma keep trying and it doesn't work my last resort is ordering the one u posted

 

Not sure man, to be honest im figuring all this stuff out as i go along. Could possibly be that your caddy is simply defective (?)

 

i figured it out weirdly when i disabled password on boot windows recognizes it but when its enabled it doesnt i have no clue so all i have now is the cpu load im gonna try ur link now lol

 

Looks like that caddy may not work for windows 8 models. I wanna be sure that the someone with a win 8 model verifies that the caddy shows no issues. I dont want to go out and buy an ssd and a caddy to find out the cpu usage error still occurs.

 

ODD replacement with caddy works for sure on SVS1512 (win8 pro)... i had to modify the caddy with a rezistor, CPU usage went away, modification is not a big deal....

 

What is that can u post how exactly you did it I have the same model and os as you and been trying to figure it out

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...-odd-caddy-video-tutorial-15.html#post9076422
post 142

A 600 ohm resistor between p4 and pin5+6 will do the work (there is an image of pins in post 140)

 

ohh u meant soldering ya im a completely nube when it comes to doing that thats like a complete diferent ball game for me like if i had better details on exactly what im suppose to to ill try it out but post 140 isnt telling me much other than where to do it. thanks though

 

some electronic repair workshop must be near you... they can make the modification in a couple of minutes for you....

 

Why can't somebody just post a picture of the resistor soldered onto the pins? I think that's all we need to do this on our own. Not trying to be demanding, but I wanna try it out. Thanks.

 

What about the optical drive replaced by the 2nd internal HDD, is there an external USB caddy so to convert it to an external optical drive?

 

hey..I was wondering if any one could help me my sony svs1511, cable that span from the hard drive to the motherboard got damage I was wonder where could i find one to replace it

 

hi. i also had problem with system interrupts and high one core usage with my vaio svs1312 (i5 late 2012 windows 8 ) after installing hdd caddy. For over a month i tried with drivers, and so on but nothing solved my problem. Then i came back here and read about resistor mod. YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME - this solved my problem completely am so happy this is how my board from caddy looks like and how i mod it:

 

Successfully installed Seagate Momentus XT 750GB in this caddy from the UK eBay.

The HDD itself goes to sleep and wakes up like a charm but the possibility of switching to SATA III by waking up the system from sleep seems to be gone though.. And 0% CPU load at idle with no mods.

 

Can we boot another OS like Win8 from the hdd in this caddy? Saw a deal for a 1TB HDD for 53.99 on ebay. This the final factor. Thanks in advance.

 

I have SVS1511C5E and been told on this forum it's not possible, however when swapping my HDD with SSD recently I learned it's not the case.
I've put HDD in the caddy and when I powered on my vaio it booted windows 7 from HDD that was in the caddy rather than windows 8 from SSD. I simply changed boot order in BIOS to choose which system I want.
I can't however vouch if it's going to work on all models as some people said it didn't work for them.

Sent from my GT-I9300 using Tapatalk

 

I came across this thread after discovering the CPU interrupts issue. I ordered the "compatible" caddy, mentioned earlier, off eBay.
In the meantime I removed my current caddy and realized that wouldn't solve the interrupts issue. I tried removing the flat cable as well, but no joy.
Now this puzzles me a bit, as I don't see where these interrupts could come from. Thoughts ?
Otherwise I'll just wait for the new caddy and see how it goes

Edit: I should mention that CPU usage is now around 20% compared to 40-50% with the caddy.

 

Finally I have found this thread. Thanks everyone for the effort!
I had this problem before after a bios upgrade and tried everything. But with the older bios version I had sudden reboots :-(

Just ordered resistors from ebay ( 10 Widerstand 595-0 MOX 620Ohm 1Watt Metalloxid 620R 1W 0207 081630 | eBay) and hope they will arrive soon. Hope this will get everything fixed!

Edit: I didn't succeed. Don't know what I'm going to do.
Now I'm running only the first hdd, removed the 2nd bay&hdd.
Still had the ~25% CPU usage.
Flashed back to the old bios (950 MHz OC version, R0142C5) and my computer is back to low idle values.
But this version has issues with sudden reboots. Hope I no longer encounter them...

 

I'm a bit lost right now.

I installed the caddy everybody (I_have_a_bike, Kiowa, 66z...) seemed to recommend: 2nd SATA HDD SSD Hard Drive Bay Caddy for Laptops (9.5mm) | eBay after an unsuccessful attempt with a random caddy.
Guess what... the CPU interrupts still occur.
However, they seem to disappear after getting in and out of sleep mode (double-checked with top on linux).
I realized my model is a SVS13 13, so from early 2013 if I understood correctly. The design of the motherboard may be slightly different.

So I'm looking for feedback from '13 owners who (un)successfully replaced their ODD. I'd like to know if there an alternative caddy, or if the resistor trick would work.

Thanks a lot !

 

From that eBay article I can not see that caddy has been patched for the Sony CPU interrupts.
So you might have an incompatible caddy anyway.

You can check it yourself (and you could patch it yourself).
There should be some resistor between two pins from the connector.
I'm sure it is mentioned somewhere. I think it was even mentioned by me a few pages back.
But I'm now not in the mood for searching...

 

Thanks for your answer EiSl.
I thought ordering a pre-built unit would be easier as I don't have a soldering iron at the moment.
I ordered yet another caddy (third one) from hddcaddy. On the page it is explicitely stated that the caddy has been "updated" to prevent our specific CPU interrupts issue.
I received it and mounted it... and I still have those damn interrupts... I can't believe it.
Either I received a faulty unit or the problem lies somewhere else.
I'll see what I can do with their customer support.

 

So guys, I think i figured out how to solve the problem. It worked for me and a friend who has the same model.
The "acpi.sys" is causing the problem normally and i had the same problem once on a desktop-computer: Problem was the BIOS.
I was running my notebook with the 143 Bios, reverted back to 142 and now everything works.

 

Hi Guys,
First off, thanks to Wizardexe! I've taken apart and upgraded a bunch of laptops, but when I was shopping around, this thread helped me make up my mind. I bought the laptop the week after I saw this thread.
I have the SVS15116GWB, with the 750 GB 5400 HD made in May 2012 that I bought with the intent of installing an SSD, and I finally got around to it.
My question is if the 'system interrupts' is affecting me?
it takes a very small portion of CPU time (usually 0%, but ticks up to 0.1% pretty regularly, see attached screen shots). Since I have an i7 with the 8 core, is it affecting me but not enough for me to catch it?

BTW, I installed the Samsung 250GB 840 EVO, and my boot time is around 5 seconds with clean install of Windows 8.1, loving it. I also upgraded the bios once, but I forgot which version.

 

Hi, I have the Sony Vaio S 15.5 SVS151290X . I want to replace the optical drive with an SSD. I'd appreciate if someone can tell me what caddy to buy and also how can I convert the internal optical drive into an external USB DVD drive. Thanks.

 

HDD Caddy – Add a 2nd HDD to your laptop for the caddy that I use.

You will drop to SATA 2...nothing you can do about that.

I don't think you can boot from your SSD drive in the caddy. Your best bet is to put the SSD as your main drive then use a traditional big drive for the caddy.

 

Thanks, I'm in the USA, do you know of any store in the US that sells it? I found this one but it's way too expensive, $40 for a caddy is crazy, I found this one in Amazon for $10, will that work for the SVS? And the extracted DVD drive, can it be used as an external USB DVD drive? If so, what adapter is needed?

 

Not sure about a US store. That caddy was recommended here I believe so I went with it and it has worked.

There is an issue with the compute'rs processor being ramped up using some caddies but for some reason this does not happen with the Dutch one.

If you can find a US/Canada one that does not cause the processor issue get it. It may be mentioned in this thread or post asking for the name.

It is frustrating but once you get it all setup it's awesome. I have a 256 SSD and a 2 TB hard drive in the optical spot.

For the DVD questions I have no clue.

 

Does having an estra SSD drain the battery faster as compared to an optical drive? Regarding the optical drive I found a solution, all you need is an external USB enclosure

 

Not that I have seen. I would think it would be better though since nothing is spinning using the SSD.

 

I seldom use the optical drive, so I'd assume that a 2nd SSD installed in its place would drain the battery faster

 

Hi guys, I've just read the entire tread! I have a svs1312C5E later 2012 with win8 preinstalled. I replaced my HD with a 250gb Samsung EVO and I'd like to use the HD with a caddy. I read about the cpu's problems, so if someone with a vaio similar to mine can give me a good solution I'll be very grateful!

Inviato dal mio HTC One utilizzando Tapatalk

 

Hi sancez , how to revert BIOS to older version ? Which tool did you use?