Add 2nd hd to laptop?

bakubo · Unread post by **bakubo** » Sun Sep 16, 2012 2:38 am

I have a laptop that has 2 drive bays. It came with a 500mb drive and I have an extra 320gb drive from my previous laptop that I want to put in the 2nd drive bay of my current laptop. I don't have a caddy for the 2nd drive and maybe I don't even need one. The 320gb drive slides right in, plugs in, and it works. It appears as drive D in Win7-64. Is there some reason I must have a caddy? It sort of looks like maybe the 2nd drive bay isn't even designed to use a caddy since when the drive is plugged in it fits well and doesn't move around. I have never installed a hd in a laptop before so maybe this is normal, but searching on the web I see lots of references to putting the drive in a caddy. Anyone here familiar with laptops? Here are some photos:

320gb hd:

IMG_6009.jpg: (205.2 KiB) Downloaded 1763 times

Empty drive bay:

IMG_6008.jpg: (181.46 KiB) Downloaded 1760 times

320gb hd in drive bay:

IMG_6010.jpg: (212.25 KiB) Downloaded 1760 times

Greg Beetham · Unread post by **Greg Beetham** » Sun Sep 16, 2012 3:12 am

Henry the impression I get after looking around is that you use a caddy if there is a big difference in the size of the drive versus the size of the recess i.e. a 1.8” drive going into a 2.5” enclosure that sort of thing, but still there are caddies available for securely mounting a drive nonetheless (if you can find one that suits your model laptop that is) http://www.newmodeus.com/shop/index.php ... 7c1c0b7668
Greg

bakubo · Unread post by **bakubo** » Sun Sep 16, 2012 3:47 am

Thanks, Greg. The hd fits so nicely just as it is without a caddy I suppose I don't need one. I sort of was wondering if the caddy had other purposes too. Maybe acting as a heat sink or providing a heat buffer from the drive to the rest of the computer, but I haven't seen anything about that. I suppose it is safe to just put it in and use it. Maybe I would use it for normal storage or maybe I could use it to separate certain things like a program's cache file or the LR catalog from the system disk.

Another idea I had was that I could install Linux on the 320gb drive to play around with it. I am assuming I can do that and leave Win7-64 on my 500gb drive and then boot from either one, but that may be a bad assumption.

Greg Beetham · Unread post by **Greg Beetham** » Sun Sep 16, 2012 5:15 am

Yeah I’ve dabbled with dual boot OS’s before too (not the penguin though) and it’s a bit of a pest after a while I think, the amount of space it uses up, the boondoggle with programs for both and deciding which is going to do what as far as email and photo editing, storage etc. not too mention user profiles and security for both…blech!

What I did do though was put (more or less inadvertently due to a couple of hardware failures, and those were mainly due to an electrical storm I think) end up with Vista installed on both current hard disks and only basically use the one on C: and occasionally update the one on D: so that should C: fail at some point I can still start my computer and try to diagnose what’s gone wrong…this time. I have to admit though since I put WD hard disks in a few years ago I’ve had a very reliable computer, except for the graphics card that is, the next one will be #3 the first two couldn’t hack the pace, I don’t play games either so I don’t know why they should fizzle only doing photo editing.

Greg

bakubo · Unread post by **bakubo** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 4:30 am

Okay, I suppose it is okay to just pop the hd in then.

I will think about it some to see if I want to bother trying to put Linux on it. If I do I would like to leave my current 500gb hd with Win7-64 totally untouched and then put Linux on the 320gb hd. Then if it is possible I could boot from either one. Linux would only be there to play around with, try various software, etc. Not meant for real use since I would continue to use Windows for that. I am a bit curious about Darktable and some other Linux software though.

Greg Beetham · Unread post by **Greg Beetham** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 3:13 pm

Henry I think the drive will be ok as long as it doesn’t have any room to flop around, put it in and the lid back on (panel whatever) and give it a shake to see if it moves, if it does maybe you can try a small Velcro self adhesive patch (without blocking any vent holes on the drive).
Greg

Dusty · Unread post by **Dusty** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 5:40 pm

Instead of Linux on the second drive, why not try Oracle's Virtual Box? If you don't have enough RAM, it will slow you down, however on my Win7Pro desktop with 12G I can run a couple of instances.

I won't buy another laptop that I can't stuff at least 8 and hopefully 16G of RAM into, as that always seems to be the limiting factor on performance. They tell you it rill run with 2G, but it's slower than a mule in molasses, and after the first service pack, forget it! If Windows has taught me anything it's "Who's ever gonna need more than 640K or RAM?" er - no - it's "You can never have too much RAM."

Dusty

bakubo · Unread post by **bakubo** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 8:37 pm

Dusty wrote:Instead of Linux on the second drive, why not try Oracle's Virtual Box? If you don't have enough RAM, it will slow you down, however on my Win7Pro desktop with 12G I can run a couple of instances.

Dusty, thanks for suggesting that! I hadn't thought of using software like that, but this is probably the way I will go since I just want to experiment a bit. Most importantly I don't want to do anything that might screw up my Win7 stuff.

Dusty wrote: I won't buy another laptop that I can't stuff at least 8 and hopefully 16G of RAM into, as that always seems to be the limiting factor on performance. They tell you it rill run with 2G, but it's slower than a mule in molasses, and after the first service pack, forget it! If Windows has taught me anything it's "Who's ever gonna need more than 640K or RAM?" er - no - it's "You can never have too much RAM."

I have 8gb of ram.

harvey · Unread post by **harvey** » Mon Sep 17, 2012 10:18 pm

There is a danger that you will affect your Windows install by installing Linux on the second disk (unless you are careful
you can replace the boot loader by mistake or even install on the wrong drive).
VirtualBox is an ideal way to play with Linux, you easily have enough RAM. You can even get pre-made virtual machines
to play with.

And yes you can have two OSs and boot from either, my current PC is set up like this. I installed Linux first and then WIndows.
The PC BIOS allows me to boot either drive and I suppose I could alter the first drive boot to pick the second one if
I really wanted to. And you can also boot from an external USB or eSATA drive if the BIOS and your connectors support it,
but then you need an external enclosure and again need to be careful with the install.

I don't think I have done anything relating to photography under Linux other than play with Hugin.

Harvey

Photoclubalpha

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