Replacing a laptop optical drive with an SSD

Today I will be showing you how to install a solid state drive in your laptop, alongside the existing hard drive.

The primary reason for doing this is so you can run Windows from a small (and relatively cheap) solid state drive (mine is 60GB) while still storing all you music/games etc on a bigger hard drive (I have a 500GB Hitachi).

First of all, I purchased a solid state drive. I bought this one as it has relatively good read/write speeds and has TRIM support.

Secondly, I went here and bought an optical bay hard drive caddy. This will replace your existing CD/DVD or Blu-Ray drive.

While waiting to receive my SSD and optical drive caddy, I made a disk image backup of my existing 500GB hard drive (I’d recommend you do this in case you need to revert back to the existing hard drive in the future).



The SSD, drive caddy and the laptop



Once I had received the SSD and drive caddy, I took out the existing 500GB hard drive and replaced it with the SSD. I’d recommend leaving your disk drive in for now, as you will most likely want to install Windows from a DVD (although you can do it from a bootable USB stick, see here)

SSD in place of the existing 500GB HDD

I then inserted my Windows 7 DVD into the disc drive and installed Windows 7 on the SSD.

Once it had installed, I shut down the laptop, removed the battery and held down the power button for 30 seconds (to discharge any remaining power).

I unscrewed and removed the panel that houses the Blu-Ray drive and removed the screw that holds the drive in (see below).

Blu-Ray drive screw hole (marked with red circle)

I then inserted the 500GB hard drive into the caddy and screwed the cover and bracket onto it (see below).



Optical bay drive caddy containing 500GB HDD, with cover reattached



All I had to do then was slide the caddy back into the slot where the Blu-Ray drive had been, insert the screw to hold it into place and then put the case covers back on the laptop.



Optical bay drive caddy with 500GB HDD inserted into the laptop



Note: at the time of taking photos, I hadn't added the Blu-Ray drive cover onto the caddy, hence why there is a gap where the caddy is visible (the silver bit).

After getting everything back together, I started up the laptop, went to Disk Management (and reformatted my 500GB HDD (as the D: drive), and then moved My Documents/Music etc to the D: drive, so as to save space on the SSD. 

To move your documents/music etc to another drive, using the following instructions:

1. Browse to C:\Users\<your user name> .
2. Right click My Documents .
3. Click Properties .
4. Click Location .
5. Type the path to the new folder.
6. Click Move .

Most applications let you specify the installation folder at the start of the installation procedure, so ensure you take the time to make sure you install programs to the desired drive (I created a Program Files folder on my D: drive and then installed programs in there).

Finally, if you need a CD/DVD drive, you can purchase a USB drive like this one, or if you want to keep your existing drive, you could purchase this.

If you need any more information or help, please feel free to leave a comment.