Large 17 inch laptops have the so-called dual hard drive option. This option allows you to have two hard drives in one laptop. Unfortunately this option is in most cases not available for normal sized and smaller laptops. But thanks to HDD Caddy we can add this option by replacing the optical drive (DVD drive or BluRay drive) with a second hard drive or SSD. With HDD Caddy you do not need to carry external hard drives or USB sticks anymore.

Choose your laptop brand

Or check the right side of this page you’ll see a list of laptop manufacturers. If you are looking for the correct HDD Caddy for your laptop please use this list. If your laptop model isn’t listed please send us an email (info@hddcaddy.com) and we will appoint you with the correct HDD Caddy.

Caddy sizes and dimensions

Available sizes (of thickness) of caddies are 7mm, 9.5mm and 12.7mm. Physically these sizes fitted in most laptop models. However a part of the existing laptop models are using proprietary optical drives. Which means these drives do not fit in other laptops and are tailored to a specific laptop or laptop series.
– For instance; the bezel of the optical drive cannot be removed
– The bezel of the optical drive has a different design than the standard. Universal HDD Caddy uses a standard fit for the assembly of the bezel.
– The ejector is part of the optical drive and cannot be removed
– The mounting brackets are part of the optical drive and cannot be removed

For some laptop models a HDD Caddy requires some physical modification.

Dvd connector interfaces

A second issue is the interface incompatibility of the optical drive. Basically most optical drives uses the SATA or PATA (IDE) technique. PATA is also known as IDE. The PATA connection is the predecessor of SATA and its theoretical transfer speed is much lower. The PATA (IDE) connection is limited to 33, 66, 100 en 133 MB/s. The SATA connection can achieve much higher transfer speeds namely 150MB/s, 300MB/s and 600 MB/s. These SATA transfer speeds are also known as SATA1 (1.5 Gigabit), SATA2 (3.0 Gigabit) and SATA3 (6 Gigabit).

However the physical interface from different laptop models can differ. For instance some laptop manufactures have designed their own physical optical drive interface based on the SATA and PATA technique. The data transfer is based on the SATA and PATA electronic interface but the physical connector is different. Therefore it’s possible you cannot transfer an optical drive from a Sony laptop to a Lenovo laptop. Universal SATA and PATA converters can incompatible if the connector is physically different.

Problem with SATA converter

One of the most common problems is that your laptop is not recognizing the second hard drive or SSD in your laptop with a SATA converter in a HDD Caddy. This is caused by the BIOS (“software” that communicates with your operating system and hardware) of your laptop. Initially a second hard drive was not an option for most laptops. Some BIOS were not designed to work with a HDD Caddy. Problems that can occur are for example:
– Different than an optical drive a HDD Caddy does not eject a tray. Normally the optical drive sends a signal to BIOS to let it know that the optical drive is closed and the computer is allowed to read the optical medium. If this signal stays “open” than the hard drive in the HDD Caddy will not be read.
– Related the problem above. The HDD Caddy can work in some laptops but causes unnecessary CPU usage during idle because the signal cannot be closed. The BIOS keeps sending this signal.
– For PATA interface you cannot have two hard drives or SSD’s at master level. In Desktop PC but also in some laptops you could set one of the drive on slave with a jumper setting. However this doesn’t work if you have two SATA hard drives or SSD’s. If you have two drives on master, Windows will not boot.

These problems can occur with all laptop models.

To prevent this problem, the SATA or PATA converter board needs to be modified.

Order now, choose your laptop:

If your laptop model isn’t listed please send us an email (info@hddcaddy.nl) and we will appoint you with the correct HDD Caddy.
Choose your laptop:

	Asus
	Acer
	Apple | Macbook Pro & iMac
	BTO/Clevo
	Dell
	Fujitsu
	HP
	IBM-Lenovo
	Lenovo
	MSI
	Medion
	Packard Bell
	Samsung
	Sony
	Toshiba

Easy installation, remove the optical drive from your laptop.

With most laptops there is a small lock screw at the bottom of your laptop that keeps the optical drive in its place. Check the video on the left.

Sometimes the lock-screw is actually above beneath the keyboard. Check the video on the right.

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Fitting caddies with custom bezel for laptop

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For some laptops we have custom HDD Caddy with fitting bezel to complete the look. A special metal hing to allow the HDD Caddy to be locked in the optical drive. Including updated SATA board to prevent shut and start problems with 2nd HDD.
HDD Caddy  Dell E6400/E6500 M4400/M4500
HDD Caddy  Dell E6420 E6520 E6320
HDD Caddy HP Elitebook 8560p
HDD Caddy  HP Elitebook 8560w 8570w 8760w
HDD Caddy HP Probook 6440b, etc. Elitebook 8440p, etc. 
HDD Caddy HP Probook 6560b 6565b 6570b  
HDD Caddy ThinkPad T60 T61 T60p T61p  

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Transfer DVD bezel to HDD Caddy

Example: HP G72 with HDD Caddy and original bezel

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If you have any questions let us known via info@hddcaddy.com