Aspire E5-551 - adding 2nd hard drive in optical bay?

I have an Aspire E5-551 that I recently upgraded. I replaced the stock hard drive with a Crucial SSD and maxed out the onboard RAM (came with 6gb, now has 16gb). The system is blazing fast now. Right now, I'm using the original HDD in an external USB enclosure for storage. I wanted to look into the feasibility of putting the storage HDD onboard by means of a caddy that fits into the side bay that would otherwise fit the optical drive. I have been able to find all kinds of options for the parts for this, but I wanted to check with the folks on this forum to see if anyone has ad any experiences with this idea and how well it works. Any info anyone can pass along would be helpful. Thanks.

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philetus

Do you have a DVD drive in there now?

You don't want to boot from it?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2nd-Hard-Disk-Drive-HDD-SSD-SATA-Caddy-Adapter-for-Acer-Aspire-V3-551G-V3-571G-/321834706648?hash=item4aeed7e6d8:g:ZtQAAOSwLVZV0Lhc

You should be able to put the bezel from your DVD on this too.

You will also need to put on the bracket to secure it.

KKitchen63

The unit does not have an optical drive in the bay. I use an external DVD drive and my OS backup is on a USB stick. I was thinking about putting the HDD in a caddy in the empty optical drive bay.

philetus

It looks like the DVD sata socket is on the board, but after you pull the dummy, look at the socket with a flashlight and make sure it is a socket. You might want to do that before you purchase parts.

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KKitchen63

That's my main concern: making sure I get the right caddy. If it works, that reduces the need for the external drive. I still use them for backups, but I would have better onboard storage with the OS and system drivers running off the SSD.

philetus

I'm sure you understood that I meant look in the hole in the laptop at the sata socket.

KKitchen63

I checked the optical bay slot after pulling the dummy plug and there is a connection available there. Just a matter of getting the right part now.

KKitchen63

Standard 13-pin SATA jack. All I need now is aa cover plate for the outer edge and the screw-down tab for the inside end. Anyone have info on part numbers thru Acer?