What models will this 2nd hard drive tray fit?

Air Bay
Product ID: SWS-P30E/MIC
Part NO: HDW004032-00

It's made to mount a 2.5" IDE drive in place of the optical drive. I know it will fit a P30 and P40 (and their MPC twins the TransPort T2200 and T2300) which were made in 2005.

Dunno why it has Air Bay on it. Empty, the tray saves 6 ounces VS having the optical drive plugged in.

 

Notebook optical drives come in 3 sizes (12.5mm, 9.5mm and the very rare 7mm) with either an SATA or IDE optical drive connector (smaller than the HDD connector). If that unit is 2005 then the ODD probably has the IDE connector (which is consistent with your comment that it takes an IDE HDD). The switch to SATA occurred around 2007

In which notebook are you wanting to put an HDD into the ODD bay?

John

 

I have one each T2200/P30 and T2300/P40 which the drive trays will fit.The trays will hold up to a 9.8mm thick drive. I'd like to know of any *other* models that used the same swappable optical drive. Were the P30 and P40 the only ones in their "family" or did Samsung use parts like the battery, optical drive etc in more models?

One thing Samsung had a fit of sanity on was the very large number of models that use the same battery as the X65 (MPC TransPort T2500). That makes them plentiful and relatively inexpensive. (Unlike batteries for some of the older models that seem to have been used in only one or two models.)

Another wonderful thing is how every Samsung laptop from at least the GX3 through the X65 uses the same 19VDC AC adapter, unlike other manufacturers that apparently just stick a hand into a bin of random connectors and throw a dart at a board with various supply voltages when designing each new laptop.

 

Excluding the slot loading drives, most notebook ODDs can be replaced with a HDD caddy because of the standard module sizes and connector. The two problems are (i) access to the screw holding the HDD in place (often under the keyboard) and (ii) fixing the caddy (there is usually a fixing bracket on the ODD which may be transferable). HDD caddies are still available but it is probably hard to find something compatible with older hardware that uses an IDE interface.

Is the X65 battery the same as on the X60 and X60+ (see my reviews here and here)? I remember having to get a new battery for one of those (it inconveniently died just after the 1 year warranty had ended) and it was expensive. They were good notebooks in many respects. I didn't know that the X65 had been rebadged.

Samsung still use 19V power supplies and I think they have the same connector except for the PSUs with the thin plug as used on the Series / Book 9 and maybe some of the other thinner notebooks.

John

 

Every Micron laptop I've seen has been a rebadged Samsung. I made a post listing the ones I know of. There should be a sticky thread to collect every make and model Samsung laptops have been rebadged as.

The X65 uses a AA-PL2NC9B, which is an extended capacity battery with 9 cells. It can also use a slimmer 6 cell style. The default, fresh after install, power settings on XP Pro claim this battery should run over 5 hours. I checked all mine, after running the calibration, and the indicated capacity runs from over 5-1/2 hours to just over 2 hours.

The docking station accommodates the 9 cell. There's at least one 3rd party 9 cell with the extra 3 cells positioned below the standard 6, making a large, elevated foot. Won't work with a docking station.

A big difference in the x65 is the video. nVidia 8600M GS with (I'd have to check with GPU Caps) 128 or 256 meg dedicated RAM. It's a break from Samsung's historic use of ATi GPUs in their laptops. Other specs on the X65/T2500 - 2.5Ghz Core 2 Duo (best CPU option available), 4 gig RAM, BlueTooth, Mini PCIe WiFi, Trusted Platform Module, 1680x1050 LCD, HDMI, FireWire, VGA port, CardBus, 3 USB 2.0 ports.

As for the 2nd HDD trays for the P30 and P40, there's a latch on the bottom of the laptop to make swapping tool free. I assume there were also floppy drive modules available. The earlier models also have quick release optical drives, but the ones I have, I don't have HDD trays or other devices for. There was Device Bay software to ensure an orderly shutdown, swap and activation of different devices without giving Windows XP or 2000 a nervous fit.

The X65 doesn't have an easy swap optical drive. By then, floppy drives were "obsolete", didn't need a 2nd battery when three more cells could hang out the back and a 160 gig hard drive was huge.

Still doesn't answer the question of whether or not any other Samsung (and rebadged versions) used the same optical drive and 2nd HDD as the P30 and P40.

One thing that's very impressive about these Samsung laptops is most of them have very high resolution LCDs and DVD combo drive were standard. The oldest I have, the TransPort GX3/T10, has a 1280x1024 screen (and a built in floppy drive), the T2000/P20, T2200/P30 and T2300/P40 have 1400X1050. The T1000/P10 is an oddball with only a 1024x768 but it has those nifty exposed CD player controls that enable it to play audio discs without booting the OS. World's Largest Walkman... multimedia laptop but give it a lower resolution LCD than the previous year's model???

 

My first Samsung was the X60 which had a 1280 x 800 display. I then got the X60+ partly because I wanted to make better use of the screen space but the 1680 x 1050 resolution was hard on my eyes (being glossy didn't help) but one reason it got superseded was the battery time of less than 3 hours. A 1440 x 900 display would have been just right for me.

Sometime I'm due to get my X60+ back and will look at it again with renewed interest. It has been used elsewhere in the family for several years but was recently superseded by something newer that wasn't running Windows XP. The remains of the X60 might also be somewhere around the house.

John