Optical drive bay hard drive caddy

[Bucky Ball]

Hi all,

Not after support, just comment, experiences and opinion. I'm considering buying an optical drive bay hard drive caddy for my laptop and dropping an SSD into it so I have two drives in my laptop (rarely use the optical drive and have other computers if I need one).

Just a couple of queries prior to taking the leap:

1/ Firstly, has anyone done this and can they relate their experiences with it, pros and cons;
2/ Secondly, my main concern is whether the PSU in the laptop is designed to support a second hard drive. In my investigations I have found nothing to suggest it isn't, just my own thinking is making me wonder if the PSU is perhaps designed for one HD, the other components in the machine (including optical drive), and adding a second hard drive might be overload. Thoughts?

If you have no idea what I mean when I talk of optical drive bay hard drive caddies, here's a bunch of them (http://www.ebay.com.au/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l1313&_nkw=optical+bay+hard+drive+caddy&_sacat=0).

Appreciate any thoughts and experiences people have re. swapping out their laptop optical drive for a hard drive caddy. TIA. ;)

[fkkroundabout]

saw a comment on lifehacker a while back of a guy who had done this with a macbook, so i would assume it's OK. hard drives don't use much power

and according to five minutes on a search engine, hard drives may actually use less power
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/179419-32-power-burner-require
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267776-32-hard-drive-power-consumption
(http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267776-32-hard-drive-power-consumption)

[Bucky Ball]

Thanks for the input. Nothing to substantiate whether a DVD or hard drive uses more power on those links that I could see. ;)

I have seen that other people have done this. Doesn't mean they are not killing their PSUs. Just thought I'd check with folk and ask opinions and experiences first. I'll keep digging.

While also not substantiated, this link (http://www.buildcomputers.net/power-consumption-of-pc-components.html)supports the assumption that SSDs use less power than an optical drive.

Guess I could look up the specs for my optical drive and SSD and work it out from that. Might be easiest, and for now, quickest.

[mcduck]

For both SSD drives and optical drives you are talking about less than 5W peak power use. (with SSD it's likely to be average use of bit above or below 1W). So either way it's definitely not something that would cause any problems to your PSU, just plugging in a USB device to charge itcan be on the same range. If that would cause any problems, you'd already see some issues with your PSU since it would have to be running at it's extreme limits for a watt or two to be too much...

Plug in your mobile phone to USB and insert a disc in the optical drive, if your computer doesn't blackscreen you'll be perfectly fine even the most power hungry SSD drive you might find. :D

[Bucky Ball]

Thanks for that. Yea, I was figuring the figures didn't amount to much from what I've been researching so I'm just about convinced.

Decided on an SSD instead of HDD as my other concern was heat, but I guess that is not much of a concern, either (but it is a good excuse for opting for a small capacity but speedy SSD rather than a 500-1TB hard drive which I should really chuck in there). ;)

[sudodus]

I connect (and boot) from SSDs in an external box connected with eSATA and USB 3 to laptops. It will use about the same amount of power as connecting from an optical drive bay hard drive caddy - so yes, go ahead, it should work well :-)