**GUIDE** Installing secondary hard drive on your M14x w/pics !!

[obc993]

Whats would be the speed on the second drive? is msata an option on the R1?

[DingDang]

Don't forget to change the RAID settings to AHCI in BIOS before you prepare the new HD. Else it will give you the annoying RAID screen every boot.

[aap010101]

I installed two Samsung 840 256GB SSD's in my R2, but the second one (the one in the caddy) is running at SATA 1,5Gb/s speed.

Are there specs on different HDD Caddy's ?

[jmunevar]

Had any issues with on and off behavior in my second disk, with 2 ssd, any one?

[lftft]

Amazon now has lots of caddies. I just purchased one from "Micro SATA cables". It looked like there were two "generic" types -- one marketed to apple owners and the others. The former seemed to have the screw tabs in the wrong place, so hopefully the one that I got will not require too much modification to fit.

[Renren90]

Just wanted to check if the HDD runs hot after some time?

Interested in doing this but not sure if I should just get another SSD with Black Friday just around the corner or to just stick my old HDD into the slot

[PJko66]

If anyone would be interested, the same thing can be done in M17x R3. Only instead of 2 drives, you end up with 3 :-P My current configuration is 128GB SSD, 2x 750GB HDD in RAID 0 and external BD-ROM. Just need ICY BOX AC642.

[kad77]

I can confirm this works, I did the same thing a few days ago, I found that no caddy would fit, so I stripped the convention SATA to optical bay SATA conversion board out of the caddy, and simply used a medical cloth tape to secure the drive to the metal optical bay bracket. Maybe more 'ghetto', but quick and easy for sure. The bracket is crewed down and the HDD doesn't move at all. All the tape really does is stop the drive from sliding, its not load bearing.

[ollari]

I bought random noname caddy, it was bit thiker than optical drive. Had to modify a bit but works like a charm.

[hoezaay]

Same here my caddy was a bit thicker but only slightly and managed to secure it in the case with just a little bit of pushing down ..Running a Sumsung Evo 850 250gb as os drive and the 500gb drive that came with it as storage ...this laptop is BLAZING fast with ssds.cheers.

[twofaze]

I am planning on doing this, but somehow i stripped a lot of screws when try to clean my m14x,  like my HDD is literally going to stay there forever mounted to the casing, any of you have ideas to remove stripped screws? I tried the rubber band method and doing some dremmel so i could have enough space for negative screws, but i don't have steady hand and it seems that i will just worsen the condition. And i live in germany, if anybody knows a tool that i could buy here to help..

[velios]

On 8/18/2014 at 9:58 AM, obc993 said:

Whats would be the speed on the second drive? is msata an option on the R1?

 

Do not try using msata on Alienware m14xr1 as it might not work based on this website : http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/m14x-r1-msata-question.658914/page-2

Thanks titan for the updates on second hdd, will try it out later this week and keep you guys updated if it works.

Edited July 6, 2016 by velios
Adding quote

[pilnet101]

Really useful, used it to install a 1TB HDD where my optical bay was and a primary SSD drive where my HDD was - thanks!

[gobiasind]

Just a reminder to everyone, be very careful to not misplace the small white plastic piece securing the DVD/HD caddy drive cable to the motherboard. Accidentally lost mine during a re-pasting teardown. checked to see what a replacement would cost and found dell refused to replace the proprietary plastic white piece. It is the entire cost of the motherboard to replace. Although i saw a couple people on a different thread suggest paper or business card shoved into the slot with the cable till it was secure and making contact. luckily i found the small plastic piece at the bottom of my trash can covered in nasty goo while searching in desperation. remembered i had swept the floor the day before while my laptop was still apart.

[Kithylin]

So.. this connects to the motherboard via SATA obviously.. So does this mean if we use this setup that we could then use... MSATA + Original sata hard drive + hard drive in a CADDY =  RAID-5 via the onboard Intel Matrix RAID on the M14x R2 ? Can anyone confirm or deny this is possible?

Edited December 24, 2016 by Kithylin

[MR20807]

Will it be worth the upgrade if an SSD operating over through SATA-II interface in the M14x R2

[aakashzxv2]

did this and im getting 3gb?s speed .maybe a bios mod can fix that (sata 3 fix)

[Asakura Kyorichi]

only managed to get SATA2 with Drive Caddy even after using Bios Mod

[eugene5055]

Very helpful, thanks!