DIY: Adding SSD or HDD storage using an optical bay caddy [ver 2.0]

[Tech Inferno Fan]

[Started 6-9-2009 as DIY: Adding SSD or HDD using an optical bay caddy (NBR). Relocated to T|I due to being banned by Lenovo fan ZaZ]

Introduction - This article contains details on how to make best use of an optical bay caddy to extend notebook storage with a 2.5" SSD or HDD in place of the standard or slot-loaded optical drive. Included are links to buy the correct caddy plus some configuration items: hotswapping, setting spindown timeout on secondary HDD.

Benefits of using an optical bay caddy

• Inexpensive. Ebay caddy is only US$12-US$26 delivered worldwide.
  
  
  
• Identical faceplate. Transplant your ODD's faceplate to an ebay Fenvi or some newmodeus caddies to achieve identical appearance to your current optical drive drive. 9.5mm ebay | 12.7mm ebay
  
  
  
• Improve performance and extend battery life using a hybrid SSD+HDD system. A small, fast SSD hosts your os and apps in your primary bay. A 2.5" HDD in optical bay caddy, in battery-efficient spindown mode when inactive, provides a decent sized data repository.
  
  
  
• 1TB/1.5TB/2TB of storage capacity using a combination of 9.5mm 500GB and 12.5mm 1TB 2.5" HDDs.
  
  
  
• Hotswap versatility. Allows the optical bay caddy and optical drive to be swapped in/out as required if used with a primary SSD/HDD. Eg: Can access an optical drive when needed to say load software or watch DVDs, then hotswap back in the HDD in caddy to access your repository of multimedia or document files.
  
  
  
• If prefer not to hotswap, can use an usb adapter/enclosure to allow either the optical drive or caddy to be used externally. Eg: PATA: 9.5mm & | 12.7mm | adapter, SATA: e-sata/usb cable or enclosure
  
  
  
• Use SATA drives in older PATA-only systems. Latest 250gb-per-platter SATA HDDs are faster and cheaper per GB than 160gb-per-platter IDE HDDs and are well matched to ICH2M+ 83-87MB interface speed. SATA SSD a good performer over sata-to-pata bridge as astericksed here. SATA SSD/HDD can be transplanted in newer SATA systems in the future. Older notebooks can be resurrected as fileservers or media centers, conditional on 48bit LBA bios support to allow full use of > 137GB storage.
  
  
  
• Can be better bang-per-buck than a system upgrade. When you consider how a primary bay SSD can provide day-and-night improvements in os and app performance improvements over a HDD.
  
  
  
• Can provide lower running temperature of HDDs compared to using the primary bay [user reported]
  

Optical bay caddy configuration matrix

I/O Chipset	Primary Bay	Optical Bay	Optical Bay Caddy Product Link		Example link/caddy used
			ebay &	newmodeus0
ICH2-8M	pata or sata1	pata23	7.0mm sata-to-pata 9.5mm pata#1 sata-to-pata#01 12.7mm pata sata-to-pata#0	- 9.5mm pata sata-to-pata 12.7mm pata sata-to-pata	HP 2510P 9.5mm sata-to-pata,pata/newm+ebay Dell M1330 9.5mm pata [slot]/newm Dell Vostro 1400 12.7mm sata-to-pata/ebay Clevo M570RU 12.7mm sata-to-pata/newm
ICH9M or newer	sata	sata	9.5mm sata 12.7mm sata	9.5mm sata 9.5mm sata 12.7mm 9.5mm	Clevo P150HMA 14mm/ebay Toshiba R830-835 9.5mm/ebay-Fenvi Alienware M14x 9.5mm/ebay-Fenvi Dell E6400/E6500 9.5mm sata/ebay &newm HP 2530P 9.5mm sata/newm HP Envy14 9.5mm sata/newm Sony Vaio Z12 9.5mm sata/newm Lenovo E420 12.7mm sata/newm Sony Vaio FW51JF 12.7mm sata/ebay HP 8730W 12.7mm sata/newm Dell XPS 1647 12.7mm sata [slot]/newm Alienware M17xR2 12.7mm sata [slot]/newm

⁰5% discount coupons on their facebook page. Their slot-loading products the same as others linked above minus the faceplate. Their 12.7mm product allowing the use of your optical drive's faceplate as shown here. ¹ SATA SSD performs best when installed in primary SATA bay. ICH8M: CAP.ISS shows if 1.5Gbps cap applies. ² if sharing PATA bus with primary bay drive, a master/slave jumper gives more config flexibility. ³ sata-to-pata chip adds power consumption overhead. newmodeus(Sunplus)=0.8W, ebay (Marvell)=1W. The newmodeus caddy has issues with SSD TRIM - the ebay caddy doesn't. Intel ICHxM UDMA5/ATA100 PATA interface measured to give maximum read of 83-87MB/s. This post compares power consumption/performance for PATA and SATA-to-PATA caddies, benchmarks show great SSD/HDD performance.

Product Link #0 can be modified to improve functionality: faceplate strength for hotswap ability, master pinmod, HDD LED.

#1 rear connector unscrews to reveal JAE50 like shown here.

Hotswapping the optical drive and 2.5" drive in optical bay caddy

Hotswap! provides a Safely Hotswap Hardware system tray icon to simplify disabling the device prior to removal or scanning the system when inserted. Allows hotswapping in/out the optical drive and 2.5" drive in optical bay caddy if using a primary SSD or HDD. Hotswapping is supported by the ICHxM SATA/PATA interfaces. So can for example watch a DVD with the optical drive then swap in a 2.5" HDD to access your multimedia files or documents.



Setting standby idle standby timeout to improve battery life

hdparm allows control of individual drive standby timeout periods to spindown the HDD if it's idle to conserve power. This would be recommended if running a primary bay SSD and optical bay 2.5" HDD at the same time. The commands below are easily added to a batch file to run in Windows startup folder.

• Download hdparm for Windows.
  
  
  
• Identify the drive you wish to operate on:
  
  

  Quote

  hdparm -i /dev/sda
  
  hdparm -i /dev/sdb

• Set a batch file to run in startup with standby time of your choice, example 1 min. Refer to the -S parameter in the hdparm commandline options. hdparm can also be used to set drive transfer mode, eg: 'hdparm -X udma5 /dev/sdb'

  Quote

  hdparm -S 12 /dev/sdb &REM set standby timeout=1min
  
  hdparm -y /dev/sdb &REM standby the drive now

Versatility: using 9.5mm caddy in other 9.5mm/12.7mm optical bay systems

The newmodeus 9.5mm SATA-to-PATA/PATA caddy slides straight into a 12.7mm PATA optical drive bay. A great way of sharing data at full speed between hosts, without having to setup a network or be limited to USB speed. Can then hotswap the caddys between multiple systems. The SATA version likely to offer same versatility.

Adding a 1.8" SSD/HDD in a 2.5" drive bay

1.8-to-2.5" adapters allows a 1.8" SSD or HDD to be installed in the optical bay caddy or 2.5" primary bay. SATA adapters shown here. PATA adapter is available on ebay for a few dollars.

Quirks applicable to Sandy Bridge HP Probooks/Elitebooks using Insyde BIOS

How to enable Upgrade Bay Hard Drive boot: so can hit F9 and boot off an optical bay caddy HDD or SSD.

Quirks applicable to PATA optical drive interfaces (ICH8M or older)

1. Some system's bios sets the pata optical interface into slow UDMA2 mode. See tiuser's software and/or MBR workaround.

2. Some system's bios sets the timings to use 33Mhz rather than 66Mhz timings. Notably HP 2510P which then caps write performance to software workaround. Consider too hardwiring the caddy Pin 34 (-CBLID) to GND to set "80-pin cable mode" which uses 66Mhz timings.

3. Phoenix bios directs boot to optical caddy HDD. See software workaround.

4. Some Toshiba systems whitelist the HDD in a sata-to-pata caddy. See here

5. May need to do a slave_mod & to get an ebay caddy running as slave. Mod works with the topda branded ebay caddy.

Followup
If using an optical bay caddy to extend system storage, please post some details as examples. Eg:

- which caddy you are using, eg: ebay or newmodeus

- the look, feel and performance of the caddy. Photos against the chassis compared to original optical drive - any gotchas or tips and tricks

- any mods, eg: on/off switch on the sata-to-pata caddy to conserve power if using it with a SSD.

Note I have no commercial affiliation with any of vendors whose products are highlighted in this article. This information is provided to assist others in creating a great bang-per-buck storage expansion/performance upgrade.

[mw86]

Thank you @Tech Inferno Fan for your guide it is amazing. It is kind of you to share such a resource. Thanks Nand4!!!!

[tiuser]

UPDATE 01.03.2013

updated UDMA_Fix.zip for better handling when going from sleep mode (I hope its finally fixed, sorry for being stupid before (: )

NOTE: sometimes if 2nd drive in caddy is in use running software workaround can potentially lead to complete freeze, so it's highly recommended to use MBR method instead.

I read about the delay at boot with newmodeus caddy, tried both master and slave jumpers without any luck.. (same ~ 18s delay at boot). I'm on HP Compaq 8710p. (bios version is F0.E patched with SLIC2.1 and unwhitelisted, F.0F has the fan issues)

OVERVIEW

To summ up everything here is how I've solved the problem:

I've used setpci to set appropriate registers

Check up Intel's ICH8 specs for further info in this file: ich8.pdf

My script is suitable for drive in MASTER mode, but can be adjusted for SLAVE as well (just check the pdf I've linked before.

Basically, you need to modify modify 0/31/1 device (IDE Controller)

54h register

48h register

4Ah

4Bh (if you use drive in slave mode).

setpci -s 0:1f.1 54.l=3033
setpci -s 0:1f.1 48.l=10001

Otherwise Windows gonna reset drive to MDMA2 or MDMA0 everytime you set UDMA5 or UDMA6 for it without adjusting these registers.

SOFTWARE WORKAROUND

Grab UDMA_Fix.zip

Read README inside the package and install accordingly to it.

If you don't trust scripts bundled inside the .zip for some reason, you can download them yourself, you'd need

1. setpci for windows 32 or 64

2. hdparm for windows

3. devcon.exe

4. fix_udma_on_sdb_setpci.bat file:

@echo off
setlocal enableextensions
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
REM path to the directory where all executables are
set PTH=c:\UDMA_Fix
REM your mode, depends on your drive udma5 for older drives, for newer udma6, 
REM WARNING: make sure udma5 or udma6 written in the lowercase otherwise script might not work properly
set MODE=udma5
REM your drive, you can check with hdparm to make sure you're applying everything to the right drive
set DRIVE=/dev/sdb

REM Don't change ANYTHING BELOW
set reg54_value=3033
set reg48_value=10001

REM whether current OS is 64bit or 32bit, to use appropriate setpci version
if defined ProgramFiles(x86) (
    set SETPCI=setpci.exe
) else (
    set SETPCI=setpci_32.exe
)

:check
REM check for registers to make sure computer won't return from sleep mode
@%PTH%\%SETPCI% -d 8086:2850 48.l|find "%reg48_value%" >nul
set reg48=%errorlevel%
@%PTH%\%SETPCI% -d 8086:2850 54.l|find "%reg54_value%" >nul
set reg54=%errorlevel%

REM check current drive mode
@%PTH%\hdparm -i %DRIVE%|find "*%MODE%" >nul
set hdparm=%errorlevel%

REM we check if both registers were successfully set we change drive's mode to %MODE%
if %reg54%==0 (
    if %reg48%==0 (
        REM we check for current drive mode if it's already set we don't do anything
        if not %hdparm%==0 (
            REM set drive desired mode if it was not set already    
            goto :fix
            REM set drive sleep mode
        )
        goto :sleep
    )
)
REM otherwise we go to fix procedure again (happens sometimes)
goto :fix

:sleep
REM set standby mode to 90 minutes
REM 30 min - 241, 60min - 242, 90min - 243, check hdparm manual page for other values
REM @%PTH%\hdparm -S 243 %DRIVE%
goto :fin

rem we need to write two registers 48 & 54 in order to make drive working @ UDMA specified mode
rem because windows thinks drive connected via 40pin cable
:fix
@%PTH%\%SETPCI% -d 8086:2850 54.l=%reg54_value%
@%PTH%\%SETPCI% -d 8086:2850 40.b=5  
@%PTH%\%SETPCI% -d 8086:2850 41.b=A3
@%PTH%\%SETPCI% -d 8086:2850 43.b=0
@%PTH%\%SETPCI% -d 8086:2850 48.b=1
@%PTH%\%SETPCI% -d 8086:2850 4A.b=1
@%PTH%\hdparm -X %MODE% %DRIVE%
devcon rescan
goto :check

:fin
setlocal disabledelayedexpansion
exit /b 0

5. all files should be inside the same directory and PTH variable should point to that directory

6. add a task to the windows scheduler with highest privileges, hidden on event logon.

MBR method

There is no need to use baredit at all, you can do everything with setpci, also there is no need to use devcon anymore as it slows down booting process and clears up registers for some reason sometimes.

Script should work for both Windows 32 and Windows 64. Please report if you encounter any problems.

EDIT: I've also succeed in MBR editing - the hack works just fine and windows recognizes drive in UDMA5 mode, even if you let computer into the sleep, so all you need is to patch MBR one time and don't need to run any scripts.

MBR instructions:

I managed to fix MBR for Windows 7 and you don't need to start anything after fix applied, you just boot that's it. And if computer returns from sleep 2nd HDD works fine in UDMA5.

Here is what my friend and I did with MBR (big thanks to my friend):

1) Basically you need to extract MBR first either with dd or HexEdit

MBR is the first 512 bytes from the start of the drive

with dd:

dd if=/dev/sdX of=mbr bs=512 count=1

2) The hack is simple - we are replacing strings from MBR (which are used to display errors) and add there our functions to write relevant data into 54h and 48h registers before windows starts in the MBR.

Basically you need to locate in original MBR

seg000:0017                 push    ax
seg000:0018                 push    61Ch

replace it with:

seg000:0017                 jmp     loc_163

find the line

seg000:0163 ; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
seg000:0163                 dec     cx

and replace with

seg000:0163 ; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
seg000:0163
seg000:0163 loc_163:                                ; CODE XREF: seg000:0017j
seg000:0163                 mov     ax, 8000h
seg000:0166                 shl     eax, 10h
seg000:016A                 mov     ax, 0F954h
seg000:016D                 mov     dx, 0CF8h
seg000:0170                 out     dx, eax
seg000:0172                 add     dl, 4
seg000:0175                 mov     ax, 0
seg000:0178                 shl     eax, 10h
seg000:017C                 mov     ax, 3033h
seg000:017F                 out     dx, eax
seg000:0181                 mov     ax, 8000h
seg000:0184                 shl     eax, 10h
seg000:0188                 mov     ax, 0F948h
seg000:018B                 mov     dx, 0CF8h
seg000:018E                 out     dx, eax
seg000:0190                 add     dl, 4
seg000:0193                 mov     ax, 1
seg000:0196                 shl     eax, 10h
seg000:019A                 mov     ax, 1
seg000:019D                 out     dx, eax
seg000:019F                 xor     ax, ax
seg000:01A1                 push    ax
seg000:01A2                 push    61Ch
seg000:01A5                 retf
seg000:01A6 ; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

My friend did it with HexWorkshop and Visual Studio + IDA.

He disassembled MBR, located where he can inject this code, compiled ASM code into Visual Studio and edited in HexWorkshop relevant parts of the MBR.

Here is first 422 bytes of MBR for Windows 7 x64 Ultimate (Partitions should be untouched if you apply this patch, but

I DO NOT GUARANTEE ANYTHING SO BETTER BACKUP YOUR MBR BEFORE PROCEEDING AND GET A LIVECD/USB RECOVERY:

mbr_patch_422_bytes

3) What does this patch do?

It writes into 0/31/1 device register 54h 3033h which stands for 80pin cable / UDMA enabled for both master and slave devices connected to IDE Controller.

It writes into 0/31/1 device register 48h 10001h which stands for PCT values used for UDMA (without this Windows will reset drive back into UDMA2 - exactly the annoying error you described).

Please test this and report back if it worked for you.

[cri-cri]

As I have recently got 2 x Crucial M4, I opted for a Silverstone TS06. This has allowed me to use the caddy for the second SSD and at the same time still have a ready-to-use optical drive in the USB enclosure.

Installation is straightforward (and well documented by the manufacturer). Sorry for the lousy pics (and if L502x owners find the pics weird, well... mine is painted black)

Caddy vs. optical drive :

XPS od face plate fits perfectly on the caddy. Same goes for the optical drive plate that TS06 comes with:

Also, the rear metal bracket (the one that attaches the optical drive to the laptop) fits perfectly on the caddy:

BIOS screen after installing the caddy:

Caddy installed, faceplate sits flush:

Optical drive in the enclosure, connected to the laptop:

My setup is: dual-boot Linux/Windows. Windows is used exclusively for occasional gaming and is installed on the second SSD, the one in the caddy. It's been three weeks with the caddy now, and I can't fault it. The laptop went through a lot of testing during this time: hundreds of reboots, partition mounting/unmounting, data copy between drives/partitions etc... Not a single glitch. All in all a fine product.

Look, feel and performance: I'd rate it 5 stars out of 5.

Gothcas, tips and tricks: None.

[tiuser]

I've updated UDMA_Fix.zip script, should be working fine after returning from sleep mode, also added UDMA5.xml to easily import into the task scheduler.

Enjoy guys.

EDIT: there seems still some problem when running this script sometimes a complete hang could occur, I'm working on it ... Stay tuned.

EDIT2: problems should be sorted out.. if not try using MBR method instead. I did few tests and it worked fine most of the time even going back from sleep mode.

P.S. ffs I hate this forum formatting and editing posts, need to click few times to get formatting visible. Can it be adjusted to make it easy to edit posts (especially links) ?

[bixente]

I am planning to upgrade my Dell PRECISION M4300 laptop with an SSD,

using the current HDD as mass storage

/dev/sdb: HDD

Model=ST9500420AS, FwRev=0002SDM1

/dev/sda: SSD

Model=Samsung SSD 840 Series, FwRev=DXT06B0Q

I have a NewModeus optical bay caddy (SATA to IDE) for my Dell.

Right now, I test the system with the SSD in the caddy, and the HDD in the main slot.

Even if in the end I plan to switch them.

My system is Debian Linux 7.0 (Wheezy)

I have just found your very informative post and tried the following:

I have been using the following setpci in the grub configuration

setpci -d 8086:2850 54.l=3033

setpci -d 8086:2850 40.b=5

setpci -d 8086:2850 41.b=A3

setpci -d 8086:2850 43.b=0

setpci -d 8086:2850 48.b=1

setpci -d 8086:2850 4A.b=2

But I still observe the real degradation of speed:

# hdparm -t /dev/sdb /dev/sda

/dev/sdb:

Timing buffered disk reads: 268 MB in 3.00 seconds = 89.19 MB/sec

/dev/sda:

Timing buffered disk reads: 8 MB in 3.32 seconds = 2.41 MB/sec

with a large number of IO error messages in the kernel logfile

And then when I check the pci registers from the shell

setpci -d 8086:2850 54.l => 2032

setpci -d 8086:2850 40.b => 7

setpci -d 8086:2850 41.b => e3

setpci -d 8086:2850 43.b => 40

setpci -d 8086:2850 48.b => 00

setpci -d 8086:2850 4A.b => 02

My bios is set AHCI, and lspci -nnv give the following

…

00:1f.1 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller [8086:2850] (rev 02) (prog-if 8a [Master

SecP PriP])

Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01ff]

Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16

I/O ports at 01f0

I/O ports at 03f4

I/O ports at 0170

I/O ports at 0374

I/O ports at 6fa0

Kernel driver in use: ata_piix

00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA Controller [AHCI mode] [8086:2829] (rev 02) (prog

-if 01 [AHCI 1.0])

Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01ff]

Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 45

I/O ports at 6eb0

I/O ports at 6eb8

I/O ports at 6ec0

I/O ports at 6ec8

I/O ports at 6ee0

Memory at f6ffb800 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)

Capabilities: [80] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/4 Maskable- 64bit-

Capabilities: [70] Power Management version 3

Capabilities: [a8] SATA HBA v1.0

Kernel driver in use: ahci

…

Looking in the log, the configuration starts nice

…

[ 1.452610] ata1.00: ATA-9: Samsung SSD 840 Series, DXT06B0Q, max UDMA/133

[ 1.452613] ata1.00: 488397168 sectors, multi 8: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/1)

[ 1.468455] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100

…

but then goes down all the way to

[ 132.028769] ata1.00: configured for PIO4

[ 4230.976758] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6

[ 4230.976771] ata1.00: failed command: READ MULTIPLE EXT

[ 4230.976787] ata1.00: cmd 29/00:00:00:00:00/00:02:00:00:00/e0 tag 0 pio 262144 in

[ 4230.976791] res 51/84:f0:10:00:00/84:01:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x10 (ATA bus error)

[ 4230.976799] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }

[ 4230.976806] ata1.00: error: { ICRC ABRT }

[ 4230.976868] ata1: soft resetting link

[ 4231.156645] ata1.00: configured for PIO4

[ 4231.156663] ata1: EH complete

[ 4263.992076] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x6 frozen

[ 4263.992082] ata1.00: failed command: READ MULTIPLE

…

[ 6321.728983] ata3.00: configured for UDMA/133

[ 6321.796683] ata1.00: configured for PIO4

Any hint?

[ernstoud]

Hi all,

Great thread. Thanks to Tech Inferno Fan for this. I own a number of old HP nc6000 systems with two HDD's with Windows XP on one and Windows 7 on the other (still using some software that only runs on XP). Windows 7 runs from the HDD in the multibay and speed was capped at 30 Mb./sec at UDMA2.

From this thread I learned from experimenting with Bar-Edit (great tool!) and reading the ICH4M datasheet that for some reason the BIOS programs the secondary IDE controller for UDMA2 instead of UDMA5.

I am now using a batch file in Startup that contains the proper setpci and hdparm commands to enable UDMA5 and an AutoHotkey script that detects the Windows message that a resume occurred which triggers the same batch file to be run after a resume. I now enjoy more than 50 Mb./sec, full UDMA5 on the drive in the multibay. Next step will be installing a Transcend 128 Gb. PATA SSD I just bought in the multibay.

From Tech Inferno Fan's post I don't understand a number of issues:

1.

He says you need to program the 54h, 48h, 4Ah and 4Bh register by:

setpci -s 0:1f.1 54.l=3033

setpci -s 0:1f.1 48.l=10001

However, since configuration register 48h is 8-bits according to the Intel datasheets, the last setpci command sends a 32 bit long word to a byte wide register... effectively also overwriting 49h, 4ah and 4bh.

The same for the first setpci command; register 54h is 16-bits so the command should be:

setpci -s 0:1f.1 54.w=3033

I use:

setpci -d 8086:24CA 4B.b=1

setpci -d 8086:24CA 54.w=5055

Which works fine. (Note that in a nc6000 the multibay drive is secondary master, not slave so register 54 is not to

be 3033 but 5055).

2.

Why do we actually need HDPARM? Why is setting the PCI registers not enough? What does HDPARM do?

I guess it triggers the Windows IDE driver to reset to the newly changed PCI configuration?

Indeed without the HDPARM -X udma5 /dev/hdb command the new PCI registers won't work...

Anyways. I learned a lot and now have full speed in the multibay. Thanks!

[goodman]

I did this to my p150em se wasn't hard, a couple of screws on the hard drive bay and the optical drive screw to get it out. I had to remove the insulating plastic on the hdd. On the caddy, which I got from amazon for under $15 I had to screw a couple of screws (4 included) to the drive then transfer face plate and pop it in. To still be able to use the ODD for my legacy games and windows instalation I had bough a slimline sata to usb adapter for under 15. It took about 15-30 minutes at the most.

[capster]

Is it possible to make the second ssd or hdd the master, even though it uses the optical drives input place?

Thanks in advance

Capster

[johnyept]

I hope I'm not to late for a little help/advice...

I've got a HP/Compaq 6820s (ICH8) with HDD and DVD drive. I bought a DVD Caddy but it doesn't "see" the SDD, so I replaced the HDD for the SDD (/dev/hdb) and the DVD for the HDD + DVD Caddy (/dev/hda). I was using Windows 7 + UDMA_fix software workaround, but Windows 7 was freezing every other boot, sometimes more. I decided to move on to Windows 8.1 update. SDD is working in UDMA5 (hdparm.exe -t /dev/hdb reports 237.33MB/s) and the HDD is back to MDMA2 (hdparm.exe -t /dev/hda reports 13.95MB/s) but I don't want to use UDMA_fix again.

Does the MBR method for Windows 7 still apply to Windows 8.1? Is there another alternative, like modding the BIOS to make it accept 2 HDD instead of forcing HDD + DVD (MDMA2)?

EDIT:

Just replaced the MBR with the patched one from tiuser and it worked great! hdparm.exe -t /dev/hda now reports around 65MB/s for the HDD!

My OS is Windows 8.1 Update Pro 64bit, I used Hirens BootCD 15.2 to boot with MiniXP, them I used the included Hex Editor HxD to back up the 1st 422 bytes of my MBR and also the full 512 bytes to a pen drive just in case, then copy/pasted the patched MBR in its place. Just make sure you're selecting the right drive, HxD just lists them as physical disk 1, 2, 3, etc with no extra information, so I opened each one in read-only mode, changed hex to decimal and checked the end of the disk to see what was its size. Since I have a 120GB SSD and a 320GB HDD, finding the SSD was a no brainer.

[jcagara08]

Thanks for your guide Tech Inferno Fan I am about to make this project too!

[ghaldos]

oh wow I didn't even know you could get something like this, which is great because I got a laptop with a broken dvd and only 1 drive. Thanks Nando4.

[MR20807]

Very crisp and detailed.

I've heard the optical SATA interface is configured as SATA-II, so any attached SSD/HDD through the caddy will conform to SATA-II speeds.

Any workarounds?

[MaycolFG]

Hello everyone, I just buy a caddy for my laptop HP dv6626us, which has a dvd drive with IDE port. After installing the caddy the system had this configuration:

 

- HDD bay: SSD Kingston with 125Gb, with Win7 Professional (from cloning the original HDD)

- DVD bay: caddy with the original HDD from HP (125 gb too), this drive has been formatted and it will be for general archives

 

But there is a problem, after install all the drives and start the system, windows start normal and detect both drives normally. But in the next system start windows freeze in the windows logo. Only removing the caddy and restart, windows start normally, then I install de caddy again and start normally the fisrt time, after that the problem back again.

 

 I check the BIOS just after install the caddy and shows:

 

- Notebook Hard Drive
- Optical Disk Drive

 

But when problem occurs shows:

 

- Notebook Hard Drive (only)

 

So, what can I do?

 

By the way, I don´t reinstall the win7 in the SSD, I just clone HDD to SSD, then I format the HDD and put the HDD in the caddy. I think there´s no problem about that because win7 start normal the first time, the problem only occurs in the following system starts.

 

Thank you very much for the help.

 

P.S.: now I am using Google translate, please sorry ...