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    2nd Drive Caddies / USB DVD/RW caddy

    Discussion in 'Dell' started by zx81, Jul 6, 2008.

  1. zx81

    zx81 Notebook Consultant

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    Someone was asking for a caddy source for installing a second drive in your dell laptop, I can tell the sotre I used, and I found an ebay store also sells a USB caddy for the DVD drive so that you can leave your 2nd drive in permanently - I've been looking for a cheap one of these for ages

    No allowed specifc Ebay links but here are the ebay store names, I can vouch for the 1st and will post on how the usb caddy is from the second when it arrives

    digizon (got the SATA caddy I use, ask him to check, it was ibm ultrabayslim)

    linnggi-tech (lots of caddy types, got DVD drive housing on the way)

    Hope this helps, cheers

    (having 2 hard drives is handy for space and convient image backups, plus running dual boots of different operating systems, I use vista boot pro, its free)
     
  2. atbnet

    atbnet Notebook Prophet

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    Are you swapping the drives in and out because only the 17 inch models have two hard drive bays.
     
  3. zx81

    zx81 Notebook Consultant

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    the caddy goes where the dvd drive would go. I leave it there and will run the dvd drive usb now, but yes you can hot swap the caddy with dvd drive, just disable the second channel in device manager, its easy and quick and doesnt require a reboot
     
  4. atbnet

    atbnet Notebook Prophet

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    That is pretty neat, I had never heard of such devices.
     
  5. zx81

    zx81 Notebook Consultant

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    Yeah there cool. The old latitudes started the craze by having a dedicated module that could house the DVD drive or a hard drive, and then the after marekt took over. The amount of electronics in the caddies is minimal.

    What I really like is making an acronis image of the main drive to the 2nd drive every week or so, and just switch off system restore, shadow copy and all that - laptop runs faster