• Install a solid state drive instead of a DVD in your laptop. How to replace a laptop disk drive with an additional HDD hard drive

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    It's no secret that today many laptop owners no longer use standard built-in DVD drives, since the popularity optical disks is decreasing every year, and they are being replaced by compact and capacious USB drives. And so that the unnecessary drive does not take up space in the system, it can be replaced with an adapter for SSD connections or regular HDD disk size 2.5 inches.

    Instructions for installing an SSD drive instead of a DVD drive in a laptop

    Before disassembling the laptop itself, you need to buy the HDD-DRIVE Caddy SATA-SATA adapter necessary for this operation, which is shaped like a regular built-in DVD drive of a laptop and has a special niche with SATA connectors for connecting additional internal storage. You can purchase this device at low prices at trading platforms, such as Aliexpress, or in similar online stores.

    You will also need a free 2.5-inch HDD drive to install in a free bay.

    After you have purchased everything you need, you can proceed:

    Turn off your laptop, close the screen, turn it upside down and disconnect the battery;

    Using a suitable screwdriver, remove the protective plastic cover to expose the drive (the principle is similar for almost all laptop models and manufacturers).

    Unscrew all the drive mounting screws, and then carefully remove it from the case. This is usually easily done through its side mounting hole;

    For reference. In some laptop models, the DVD drive is secured with one screw located under the keyboard. With this design, there is no need to remove the lower part of the housing to dismantle it. It is enough to remove the fixation of several latches, lift the keyboard, unscrew the screw and remove it in the direction of opening DVD tray drive.

    Then you need to install new SSD or HDD drive into the bay of the purchased adapter, and place the already assembled structure in the place of the previous drive. Don't forget to connect the power cable and screw back all the fixing screws;

    Collect back laptop in reverse order, install the battery and try to turn on the system.

    For reference. Installed disk may not be determined immediately. It may be necessary to format it through Disk Management Manager. To do this, go to the control panel, select “System and Security”, then click “Administration”, then “Computer Management”. The system will detect the new connected drive and by right-clicking on it, you can easily format it into the desired file system, as well as give it a name that will be displayed in Windows Explorer.

    Every user would like to install a modern SSD drive on their PC for better productivity and more high speed system operation. Put solid state drive to a computer is incredibly simple, and the process itself is usually not accompanied by any difficulties.

    By the way, there was a similar article earlier, but in it we only needed to remove a small cover on the back of the case, which does not create any difficulties.

    But install an SSD in a laptop instead DVD drive, is much more difficult, because first you need to carefully disassemble it. And many users already have difficulties at this stage. So let's look at the whole process in more detail.

    What is required for installation?

    First, you should familiarize yourself with the characteristics of your laptop to understand what components you need to purchase. As practice shows, in the majority modern models With a CD drive you can easily install an additional hard drive. Therefore, there should be no problems.

    Before you begin, you should make sure that you have everything you need for full-fledged work.

    You will need:


    Special attention should be paid to the last point, so let's look at it in more detail.

    How to choose an adapter?

    The drive size comes in two types and differs in thickness - 9.5mm and 12.7mm. Before purchasing an adapter, carefully measure the thickness of your drive and only then buy the appropriate adapter. Otherwise, the SSD drive adapter simply will not fit into the laptop in place of the DVD drive.



    You should also pay attention to the interface through which the drive is connected. If SATA interface, then using an adapter with an adapter to mSATA, you can easily install an SSD instead of a disk drive. But if your DVD drive is connected via IDE, and this is an outdated technology, then to connect the SSD you will need an adapter from IDE to SATA.

    As mentioned above, the adapters differ only in thickness, while their shape and width are the same. The adapter usually comes with a disposable screwdriver, screws for fastening the hard drive and a plastic cover. The latter is needed for installation on the adapter to cover the free space that appears after removing the drive.

    Disassembling a laptop

    After we have prepared everything necessary for replacement and purchased a suitable adapter for the SSD, we can begin opening the laptop and then replacing the drive.

    You can do this as follows:


    After the battery is disconnected, you need to remove installed hard disk.

    To do this:


    Under the cover there is a hard drive and memory modules. We need to remove the hard drive, since a solid-state drive will be installed in its place.

    If you ask why we install the SSD here, and not instead of the drive, then there is a simple explanation for this.

    When the speed of the bus to which the hard drive is connected is faster (in in this case the hard drive is connected via SATA 3, while the drive has SATA 2), then the SSD is installed in place of the HDD.

    To properly remove the drive, you must carefully follow the following instructions:


    We put both drives aside; we will return to them later.

    Removing the Top Cover

    Now we need to remove the top cover of the laptop by unscrewing all the fixing screws. It should be taken into account that they are different sizes and you definitely need to remember where they came from.

    After all the screws are unscrewed, the matter remains with the pick. Now you need to separate the bottom and top part laptop. You need to be extremely careful when opening it, as most models have unreliable latches that can easily break. Check again that all screws have been removed, otherwise there is a risk of damaging the device case.



    To remove the cover, you need to insert the pick into the slot that is located between the top and bottom covers, and slowly turn it to release the latches located inside the case. You should start from the front of the laptop, where the indicator lights. It is necessary to walk the mediator around the perimeter of the entire body.

    After you separate the top cover from the bottom, do not lift it up suddenly. Both parts are connected by cables and you can damage them.

    When working with some devices, you do not have to disconnect the cables, since sometimes you can replace the DVD drive without removing the top part of the device, which can significantly save your time.

    DVD drive

    Now unscrew the DVD drive. We will need a short screwdriver to remove the screw that secures the drive to the case. Once it is unscrewed, you can remove the drive without any problems.



    Then remove the plastic cover from the DVD drive. To do this, you need to open it. To do this you will need a paperclip or a needle. Find a small hole on the front panel of the device and insert a paper clip into it. After lightly pressing, the drive carriage will move out of the housing, and you will have full access to its lower part and can easily separate the plug from the carriage.



    Once the plug is removed, it will need to be placed on the adapter.





    After this, we install the adapter in place of the drive we previously removed and tighten the fastening screw.



    All that remains is to turn the laptop over and install the SSD drive in place of the old HDD. Close the cover removed at the beginning of disassembly and tighten the remaining bolts around the perimeter of the device, insert the battery.

    The laptop is now assembled and ready to use. We installed two hard drives: we put the old HDD in an adapter and connected it instead of a disk drive, and a new solid-state drive is mounted in its place.

    Software settings

    The next step will be Bios setting, namely the inclusion AHCI mode. This mode allows you to increase the speed of the drive, mainly due to the advantages of NCQ technology. It also opens up other possibilities, such as hot swapping.


    Now you know how to install an SSD in a laptop instead of an old DVD drive, and you can do it yourself without any problems, following our instructions exactly.

    By the way, you can completely transfer the system without losing its functionality using special programs, for example, such as Acronis Universal Restore, Macrium Reflect and others. They have wide functionality and will help you in this situation.

    The topic is fully discussed in this video

    Drives for recording CD/DVD discs are increasingly losing relevance over time, because now almost everything modern devices capable of reproducing information through USB drives, i.e., for example, flash drives, external hard drives. And it turns out that in those laptops that were purchased with a disk drive, this same disk drive sits idle and is almost never used. However, it can be replaced with additional hard drive, thus you will have one more place to connect the HDD.

    In this article I will tell you how you can install a regular CD/DVD drive in a laptop. hard drive HDD.

    It is especially important to change the CD/DVD drive in those laptops that initially have only one standard bay for installing a hard drive or SSD. And if you want to install a high-speed SSD instead of a hard drive, then this turns out to be impossible for many. For the reason that the price is 1 GB. The space on the SSD is very large, i.e. such a disk with large capacity it will be very expensive. And if you install a small-capacity SSD (approximately 100-200 GB is very popular), then this amount of space is unlikely to be enough for anyone. Only one system, for example, Windows 10 with all the necessary programs will eat up to 150 GB. That's why, good way out in this case, install a small SSD instead of a regular hard drive, and replace the drive with a hard drive, either an old one or a new one with an even larger capacity.

    For desktop computers, all this is irrelevant. IN system unit There is always room to connect additional HDD or SSD drives.

    There is no point in installing an SSD drive instead of a drive. Because the drives operate on a slower SATA port and a high-speed SSD drive It just won't reach its full potential. Therefore, instead of a disk drive, it makes sense to install only an HDD disk!

    The principle of replacing a CD/DVD drive with an HDD hard drive

    The replacement process itself is not at all complicated, but you will need to buy one part - an adapter, which I will discuss below.

    So, point by point:

    All! A hard drive is connected instead of an unnecessary CD/DVD drive. You can turn on the computer and work :)

    Possible problem when installing an HDD instead of a disk drive and its solution

    When connecting a hard drive instead of a CD drive/ laptop dvd through a special adapter, a problem may arise that I encountered on 2 laptops.

    It consists in the fact that after HDD installations Using an adapter instead of a disk drive, the computer stops turning off normally and also goes into various sleep modes. When you try to perform one of these actions, the computer ends all programs, but never completely turns off. At the same time, the fans continue to work, and at increased speed and the computer may turn off or go into desired mode sleep after more than an hour, and may continue to work and heat up endlessly.

    When I first encountered this problem, I spent a very long time looking for the cause, went through all the drivers and looked for the problem in the system itself and installed programs, because the hardware itself is all in good condition.

    It turned out to be very simple. There is a switch on the adapter (sled) that connects the HDD instead of the disk drive. I was not able to find out what exactly it switches, but apparently some kind of operating mode. Here's what it looks like:

    Just move this switch from starting position into one of the two available ones, after which you install the HDD in the laptop again and check if the situation has changed. If not, move the switch to the last 3rd position. In this case, everything should work 100% as it should.

    Why do you need to install a hard drive instead of a disk drive in a laptop? Increasingly, a solid-state drive is being used as the main storage device. Installing an SSD in a laptop makes the system boot and run faster. However, such devices, as a rule, have modest volumes - storing hundreds of gigabytes of films, games and other important information there's nowhere left.

    With a desktop computer everything is simple - you can install at least a few additional drives. Not on a laptop free space. However, it is entirely possible to remove the drive, which is becoming increasingly useless, and install an SSD or HDD () in the laptop instead of a DVD drive. It will not be possible to connect the hard drive directly - in laptops, disk drives and storage devices use different connectors. Adapters from DVD to HDD-SATA come to the rescue (You can also find adapters to HDD-IDE, but they are only suitable for old laptops).

    Now let's figure out how to put second hard disk in a laptop using an adapter?

    It makes no difference what type of disk is installed in the laptop's optical drive bay - both HDD instead of DVD and SSD will connect the same way. It should be borne in mind that computer manufacturers do not provide for such a modification - there are no official adapters, only Chinese models(for example, Optibey). However, due to very simple device There is no need to worry about the quality of the adapter. But all responsibility for possible problems The user assumes this - he will lose the warranty on the laptop.

    Before connecting an additional SSD to a laptop or installing an HDD in the DVD drive bay of a laptop, you need to ensure safety: disconnect the battery, and also ground yourself - touch, for example, the battery to remove static voltage from your hands, which can destroy components motherboard computer.

    Adapter selection

    Many manufacturers produce HDD sleds for laptops. There is no significant difference between them - you just need to choose the appropriate size HDD adapter. A laptop can have one of two types of drives installed:

    • 12.7 mm high - in older models;
    • 9.5 mm - in modern ultra-thin computers.

    It's not a big deal if the thin adapter is used for a laptop with a high bay - installation will pass no problem. But it is better to choose a suitable adapter so that replacing the CD drive with an SSD in a laptop does not cause difficulties. In addition, it is worth buying a sled with special brackets, with which they cling to the outer part of the computer case, it will be easier to remove the device if necessary.

    Disabling the drive and HDD

    Creating a laptop with two hard drives Perhaps in any case, the differences will only be in how the computer case is disassembled. Models different manufacturers may have their own characteristics, but the general procedure is as follows:

    1. The battery is disconnected. If it is non-removable, the battery connector is disconnected from the motherboard.
    2. On the bottom surface of the case, the screws holding the drive are unscrewed.
    3. The DVD drive is removed.
    4. The cover covering the main parts of the laptop is removed. If there is a separate compartment for the drive, as in Sony computers, there is no need to completely disassemble the case.
    5. The HDD is removed from the device.

    If you are installing second hard disk into a laptop without replacing the old HDD, there is no need to disconnect it.

    Unlike desktop computer, wires and plugs do not need to be disconnected by hand. They are firmly fixed and will turn off themselves when the devices are removed, so no problems should arise.

    Connecting the hard drive to the adapter

    1. Installed in place of the old HDD solid state drive, and the removed hard drive is connected to the adapter;
    2. Both bays accommodate SSD drives;
    3. Using a slide, the drive is replaced with an SSD or any other hard drive, the old drive remains in its place.

    In any case, you need to install operating system to a faster drive - either an SSD instead of a DVD, or a disk installed in the main location. This is due to the fact that SATA cable, designed for a DVD drive, is 4 times slower than the cable connecting the drive to motherboard. Therefore, with an HDD installed instead of a drive, the system will boot much longer and, in general, the laptop will work slower. The performance of the SSD somewhat compensates for this difference.

    Replacing a DVD with a hard drive is as follows:

    1. The disk is detached from the original slide, to which it is screwed with 4 screws;
    2. The hard drive is inserted into the Optibay adapter and connected to the connectors. On the opposite side, a plastic spacer is inserted, which comes complete with the adapter;
    3. Screws are screwed into the underside of the slide to hold the drive in place;
    4. The fasteners are removed from the original drive and screwed to the adapter;
    5. A plug is placed on the outside of the adapter;
    6. The device is inserted into the laptop drive bay;
    7. After this, all that remains is to insert the SSD into the slide from old tough disk, tighten their screws and install the device in its place. Next, the computer case is assembled in reverse order.

    Problems with the laptop detecting the second drive

    In some cases, the BIOS does not recognize the second hard drive. It's not a problem. This is due to the features of the BIOS itself. Loading the system will pass in normal mode. If you have installed an SSD instead of a disk drive and want to install the system on it, the program will normally detect the disk.

    If the existing OS does not see the second disk, the reason may be that it is not formatted. If you go to system utility"Disk Management", the new hard drive will be detected. You need to format it in file system NTFS and it will appear in Explorer.

    Thus, even inexperienced user, since installing a second hard drive on a laptop is very simple. The main thing is to choose the right adapter and not lose the screws when disassembling and reassembling the computer. Below you can watch the video on installing hard disk instead of a DVD drive in a laptop and MacBook.

    Hello. SSD drives are becoming more and more popular in the component market every day. Very soon, I think, they will become a necessity rather than a luxury (at least some users consider them a luxury).

    Installing an SSD in a laptop provides a number of advantages: more fast loading Windows OS (boot time is reduced by 4-5 times), more long work laptop from the battery, the SSD drive is more resistant to shocks and shocks, the grinding noise disappears (which sometimes happens on some models HDD drives). In this article, I want to analyze step-by-step installation SSD drive in a laptop (especially since there are quite a lot of questions about SSD drives).

    What is needed to get started

    Despite the fact that installing an SSD drive is a fairly simple operation that almost any user can handle, I want to warn you that everything you do is done at your own risk. Also, in some cases, installing another disk may result in denial of warranty service!

    1. Laptop and SSD drive (naturally).

    Rice. 1. Disk drive SPCC Solid State Disk (120 GB)

    2. Phillips and straight screwdrivers (most likely the first, depending on how your laptop covers are secured).

    Rice. 2. Phillips screwdriver

    3. Plastic card(any one will do; it can be used to conveniently pry off the cover that protects the disk and RAM laptop).

    4. Flash drive or external hard drive (if you just replace the HDD drive with an SSD, then you probably have files and documents that need to be copied from the old one hard drive. Subsequently, you will transfer them from the flash drive to a new SSD drive).

    Options SSD installation disk

    A lot of questions come in regarding options for installing an SSD drive in a laptop. Well, for example:

    - “How to install an SSD drive so that it works and old hard disk and a new one?";

    - “Is it possible to install an SSD disk instead of a CD-ROM?”;

    - “If I just replace the old HDD with a new SSD drive, how will I transfer my files to it?” etc.

    I would like to immediately highlight several ways to install an SSD in a laptop:

    1) Simply remove the old HDD and put a new SSD in its place (the laptop has a special cover that covers the disk and RAM). To use your data from the old HDD, you need to copy all data to other media in advance, before replacing the disk.

    2) Install an SSD drive instead of an optical drive. To do this you need a special adapter. The point is general view like this: take out the CD-ROM and insert this adapter (into which you insert the SSD drive in advance). In the English version, it is called as follows: HDD Caddy for Laptop Notebook.

    Important! If you buy such an adapter, pay attention to the thickness. The fact is that there are 2 types of such adapters: 12.7 mm and 9.5 mm. To know exactly which one you need, you can do the following: run the AIDA program (for example), find out exact model your optical drive and then find its specifications online. In addition, you can simply remove the drive and measure it with a ruler or caliper.

    3) This is the reverse option from the second one: install the SSD instead of the old HDD drive, and install the HDD instead of the drive using the same adapter as in Fig. 3. This option is preferable (in our opinion).

    4) Last option: install an SSD instead of the old HDD, but buy a special box for the HDD to connect it to USB port(see Fig. 4). This way you can also use both an SSD and an HDD drive. The only negative is the extra wire and the box on the table (for laptops that are often carried, this is a bad option).

    How to install an SSD drive instead of an old HDD

    I will consider the most standard and frequently encountered option.

    1) First, turn off the laptop and disconnect all wires from it (power, headphones, mice, external hard drives etc.). Next, turn it over - on the bottom wall of the laptop there should be a panel covering the laptop’s hard drive and battery(see Fig. 5). Remove the battery by sliding the latches to different sides*.

    * Mount on different models laptops may vary slightly.

    Rice. 5. Attaching the battery and the cover covering the laptop disk. Dell laptop Inspiron 15 3000 series

    2) After the battery is removed, unscrew the screws that secure the cover that covers the hard drive (see Fig. 6).

    3) The hard drive in laptops is usually secured with several screws. To remove it, just unscrew them and then remove the hard drive from the SATA connector. After that, insert it in its place new disk SSD and secure it with screws. This is done quite simply (see Fig. 7 - the disk mount (green arrows) and the SATA connector (red arrow) are shown).

    4) After replacing the disk, secure the cover with a screw and install the battery. Connect all the wires (previously disconnected) to the laptop and turn it on. When booting, go directly to the BIOS (article about login keys:

    Rice. 8. Has the new SSD disk been detected (in the photo the disk is recognized, which means you can continue working with it).

    If the disk is detected, check what mode it is operating in (it should work in AHCI). In the BIOS, this tab is most often Advanced (see Fig. 9). If you have a different operating mode in your settings, switch it to ACHI, then save the BIOS settings.

    After the settings have been made, you can begin installing Windows and optimizing it for SSD. By the way, after installing the SSD, it is recommended to install Windows again. The point is that when Windows installations- it automatically configures services for optimal performance with SSD drive.

    By the way, very often I get asked questions about what to update to speed up the PC (video card, processor, etc.). But rarely does anyone talk about the possible transition to an SSD to speed up work. Although on some systems, switching to an SSD will help speed up the work significantly!

    That's all for me today. Everyone fast work Windows!

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