Anyone converted the DVD drive to a second HDD on a laptop?

OK I converted my Sony Vaio's 500GB 7,200 rpm HDD to a Sammy 850 EVO - all very straightforward and worked a treat.

So reluctant to spend big bucks on a temporary USB solution, ( I tried 2 cheap ones and both had problems) plus whats the point just buy another WD Passport!
I saw a conversion Caddy and they say its for my Laptop. Plus I am assuming a DVD writer combo Blu Ray read writer will draw more power than a std. HDD ; so I thought well this should be a safe solution, and as I only use the DVD drive to load programs ( all now done) , and I hope the drive installed in the Laptop will be faster than over USB. Ordered the conversion Caddy.

So my question:
1. Is it just as simple as changing the boot order in the bios from 1st DVD to HDD. I have done this anyway?

2. As my intention is to sell the Laptop when the new HP workstation arrives, and I have some time right now. Can I format the HDD, create a partition disk D 100 GB and E 400 GB and then change the boot order (temporarily ) back to the DVD D drive , and just restore from the recovery CDs to the old HDD a sort of blank windows OS . So I am effectively all ready to just swap the discs over and salvage my Sammy SSD for the HP, when its time to sell it. My thought being its all tested and ready to go on eBay.?

- effectively can one have a sort of latent OS on this new drive D, and just use drive E for internal storage?
Obviously changing the boot order to have the Sammy as the first disk. Or is it dangerous to have 2 operating systems on drives in the same laptop.
- or should I keep it simple and just use this as a second disk until the time to sell and convert it sll back then?

I am asking the question as I really cant be bothered with any issues for say a months usage.

You might say why bother, well its just if I do not get a reasonable bid on this now seriously rejuvenated , and totally immaculate Laptop ( whose performance really has improved with the SSD) , then I will keep it - as its useful to have a fast portable system to show models their photos.
TBH the Samsung 850 Evo improved the Laptops performance so much, the only reason now to get the HP workstation is to have a 4K screen ( and for futures if say, I want to render any 4K video stuff)
Sadly the Laptop GPU only supports 2560 x 1600.

Any views tips etc. welcome.

in terms of boot order, often there's a "boot menu" option that you can pick during start-up that allows you to manually select which device to boot from (saves from having to fiddle with the bios)

Not exactly the same, but I replaced the optical drive in my 2011 MacBook Pro with a 2nd hard drive, and installed the optical drive in an external USB enclosure. I have a 120GB SSD for MacOS X and related programs - the original drive, and a 750GB WD Black HDD with 2 partitions... One just large enough for Windows 7 Pro, and the other is a large exFAT partition accessible by both Windows and MacOS X for files and such. So I'd say it's definitely possible, especially if you've found a kit to replace the optical drive already. That's probably the hardest part.

You should be able to restore the hard drive from the recovery partition on the main hard drive, or recovery discs. But note, just because the original drive has been formatted, doesn't mean the information is not recoverable unless you do a multi-pass overwrite of the drive (takes forever, but it's secure).

joeseph wrote in post #17668325
in terms of boot order, often there's a "boot menu" option that you can pick during start-up that allows you to manually select which device to boot from (saves from having to fiddle with the bios)

Thanks, there is supposed to be one F11 but it doesnt work, one has to do F2 and then access the boot memu.

Imwondered if there was somewhere one could stop the disc spinning when not in use. as I assume that wont work when in the DVD bay?

Submariner wrote in post #17668397
Thanks, there is supposed to be one F11 but it doesnt work, one has to do F2 and then access the boot memu.

For getting into the BIOS you should check the manual for your specific machine on methods. If the machine is off, many Sony Vaio's will go directly to BIOS if the F3 key is held down as the power button is then pushed. If your machine has the "ASSIST" button, then pressing that before powering up will take you directly to a menu, and you can get into BIOS through a choice from that point.

On my Dell, when I use the bay for another drive, that drive is recognized as an HDD and spins down automatically after some interval, probably something like a minute or two. When I access something on that drive, the time to spin up is noticeable but probably only a few seconds. I've never investigated if or where a setting might be to control the time interval before the drive spins down.

By the way, and again specific to the Dell, I had issues with hibernation enabled so you might check to make sure that is disabled, especially if your machine won't wake up. Note I said hibernation as opposed to standby. They are different and standby works fine.

Thanks for the tips guys

Would this swap have an overheating potential, just wondered if both the dvd bay and the position of the hard disc were cooled differently ( if at all) ?

Submariner wrote in post #17668653
Would this swap have an overheating potential, just wondered if both the dvd bay and the position of the hard disc were cooled differently ( if at all) ?

I think you are suffering from analysis paralysis. See if Sony makes a bay drive for the purpose of adding a secondary HDD. If they do I seriously doubt there is an issue. I actually don't anyway. HDD drives are essentially sealed units and often buried well into the guts of laptops where little if any cooling exists. In addition, these drives aren't spinning away continuously. They spin up when I open an application but then, depending on what you are doing and how much RAM you have, they spin back down until such time as some code needs to be run for some task.

John from PA wrote in post #17669225
I think you are suffering from analysis paralysis. See if Sony makes a bay drive for the purpose of adding a secondary HDD. If they do I seriously doubt there is an issue. I actually don't anyway. HDD drives are essentially sealed units and often buried well into the guts of laptops where little if any cooling exists. In addition, these drives aren't spinning away continuously. They spin up when I open an application but then, depending on what you are doing and how much RAM you have, they spin back down until such time as some code needs to be run for some task.

Thanks

Side note. I did this got a SDD as the main drive and then replaced the DVD with a caddie and my big drive. (Mine was kind of a pain as it's a slot drive so take the back off, release all the screws and cables for the keyboard, remove the top and go in from there to swap drives.)

Lightroom editing was kinda slow with this setup. I had "Auto export to XMP" so with every slider change or brush stroke it was having to access the secondary (much slower) drive.

I got a big speed boost by changing my work flow to:
Import
Select photos worth working on.
Make 1:1 previews of them
Make edits
Save out XMP

travisvwright wrote in post #17676208
Side note. I did this got a SDD as the main drive and then replaced the DVD with a caddie and my big drive. (Mine was kind of a pain as it's a slot drive so take the back off, release all the screws and cables for the keyboard, remove the top and go in from there to swap drives.)

Lightroom editing was kinda slow with this setup. I had "Auto export to XMP" so with every slider change or brush stroke it was having to access the secondary (much slower) drive.

I got a big speed boost by changing my work flow to:
Import
Select photos worth working on.
Make 1:1 previews of them
Make edits
Save out XMP

When you were accessing the old hard drive in the DVD space, was it slower than when it was in the primary drive location.
I am just trying to get a feel if the controller for the DVD bay was slower or the same as when your old HDD was in the primary hard drive location.
I Assume they are both SATA so should be the same , but as they say assumptions are always dangerous lol

Submariner wrote in post #17676491
When you were accessing the old hard drive in the DVD space, was it slower than when it was in the primary drive location.
I am just trying to get a feel if the controller for the DVD bay was slower or the same as when your old HDD was in the primary hard drive location.
I Assume they are both SATA so should be the same , but as they say assumptions are always dangerous lol

Many laptops will have SATA II for the optical bay and SATA III for the HDD/SSD bays. Running a recent generation SSD on a SATA II port will easily saturate the data bus and bottle neck the SSD.

Submariner wrote in post #17676491
When you were accessing the old hard drive in the DVD space, was it slower than when it was in the primary drive location.
I am just trying to get a feel if the controller for the DVD bay was slower or the same as when your old HDD was in the primary hard drive location.
I Assume they are both SATA so should be the same , but as they say assumptions are always dangerous lol

I do not believe in mine that was the case. Just that the disk not being in use would sometimes need to spin up before I could access. Plus it is a giant (2TB I think) and slow (I think 5600) Maybe just slow in comparison to the SSD that is the primary.

Thanks Dave and Travis.
My. 7,200 in the primary bay was 3Gb/s so I assumed the controller was Sata II - Imwas pleasantly surprised when I put in the Samsung 850 Evo and it showed up as 6 GB/ s - so my controller was Sata III.
Sadly with Somy its impossible to find out any technical details of the build, evenif you write to them it takes 10 days for them to come back with some utter nonsense. Never the facts!

Hence I am inteigued to find out if the DVD / Blu Ray weiter is Sata III - i guess there is a slim chance as its a Blu Ray drive they used the same Sata III contoller., but I guess installing the old 3 GB/ s it wont matter either way.