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My laptop has a built-in hard disk (HGST 500GB). I want to use SSD as boot/C: drive. I mainly use windows 8.1 (I may need to install ubuntu alongside it). My laptop model is HP Pavillion n004tx.

  1. Is it possible to install SSD on caddy(CD drive replacement) and use it as C drive?
  2. Which would be more efficient SSD in place of my existing Hard Drive or SSD in the caddy(CD drive replacement)?
noobs
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2 Answers2

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You can install the drive in any bay as long as it has a SATA port that you can connect to. Optical drive bay should be fine in modern laptops. (older ODDs used to have IDE connectors, but I have yet to see one in modern laptop)

Drive letters are a matter of configuration, physical connections don't affect them.

You should, however, check which version of SATA is supported by the second connector. Sometimes dedicated HDD SATA ports are SATA III, while ODD ports are slower SATA II (because optical disks are slow and such connection can't be saturated anyway, so slower SATA is just fine for ODD).

All SATA versions are compatible with each other and your SSD will still be blazing fast compared to HDD if you connect it to SATA II port, but it would be preferable to use SATA III for its extra bandwidth. If both of your ports are SATA III, then it doesn't matter which drive is where.

Here's a related question: How can I determine the SATA controller version on Windows?

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gronostaj
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Make sure the Caddy you buy has a jumper on it,

enter image description here

otherwise you can run into ACPI.sys DPC/Interrupt issues (2nd example).

For stability (I saw unstable Windows when running a SSD in a caddy) and performance reasons, put the SSD in the native HDD slot and use the old HDD in the caddy.

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magicandre1981
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