Many laptops until years ago were sold with a DVD disc reader, however this has been totally outdated and surely that in recent months and even years you have not opened it even once. Have you ever considered replacing your old reader with a 2.5-inch SATA SSD?
The optical format, first in the form of CD-ROM and later in the form of DVD-ROM, has become totally out of date. Its biggest bottleneck? The fact of giving access speeds of only tens of megabits per second in a world where not hundreds, but even gigabits of transfer speed are necessary, so these formats have become outdated.
It is true that in video game consoles they are still used, but not directly and they require dumps to their hard drives, since they do not offer enough speed to be used directly. In addition, the increase in the bandwidth of internet connections has made it faster to install from a download than from the reader.
Additionally, little by little PC software creators have made the transition to digital distribution and no longer release their new software in physical format. This has led to the new computers no longer being sold with a reader.
Why replace my reader with a SATA SSD?
Apart from the reasons that we have told you in the introduction, we must add the fact that it has become a dead piece that does not contribute anything. In the case that you have a desktop PC, you will have it as easy as removing the reader from the bay and placing the disk drive, but if you have a laptop, things change.
In a laptop, space is important and once the CD, DVD or Blue-Ray drive becomes a dead weight, it is time to remove it, however it would be a waste not to take advantage of that free space that we have and the best option is to place one SATA SSD drive that increases the storage capacity of your laptop.
Having more storage is always a good option and it can help you even to avoid having to carry an additional unit in the event that you have just enough space on the hard disk, since it is better than over, not missing.
First step: purchase the Caddy and the SATA SSD
The shape and dimensions of the space that the DVD reader occupies in our laptop is designed for it, so we cannot directly insert an SSD drive. So you will need the use of a Caddy, in which you will place the SATA SSD to replace the reader.
One of the things you have to look at is the height of the reader, since depending on which one you will have to buy one type of Caddy or another. The standard measurements are 9.5 mm or 12.7 mm and you can easily buy one for little money.
Once you have the bay, you will only need to place the 2.5-inch SATA drive inside, the choice of this is left to your liking, since you better than anyone know what your budget and storage needs are.
Step two: open the laptop
The first thing you will have to do is disconnect all the cables from the laptop and remove the battery from it, since for safety we do not want anything other than electrical current in one way or another.
Once you have disconnected everything, you have to open the laptop, to do this, fold the screen and put it face down on the table. By the way, we recommend using a clean towel so that it does not catch the dust on the table and above all that it is not damp.
Once this is done, unscrew the screws on the housing to gain access to its interior. You may not be able to do it due to the fact that they use special screws, do not worry, since there are repair kits that will allow you to do it and that from here we recommend always having for any eventuality. By the way, we also recommend that you take the opportunity to clean the inside of the laptop using compressed air to remove the dust that has accumulated inside, as well as other operations such as cleaning and renewing the thermal paste of certain components.
Third step: replace the reader with the SATA SSD
We have to remove the reader unit, for this you will need an additional tool in the form of a credit card or plastic knife, do not use a metal one to replace the reader for safety. You will have to disconnect the drive completely from the SATA port, as well as remove the power cables of the same type. Our advice? Leave the cable plugged in on the motherboard side in case you need to reconnect it. In some laptops, their industrial engineers have incorporated an easy ejection mechanism to remove the reader unit, if you touch one of these it will be much easier to carry out the operation.
One thing you will have to do to prevent dust from entering your laptop is to recycle the front, which means that you will have to remove it from the reader to place it in the Caddy, the operation is very simple and although you may find that some include their own frontal it may be that the aesthetic difference squeaks you a bit.
The installation of the bay with the SATA SSD is done by doing the reverse steps that you have done to disassemble the reader in order to mount the unit. Once everything is done, you just have to put the laptop back together again, connect everything and enjoy your extra storage on your laptop.
Can I use a HDD instead of an SSD?
Of course, from the moment that the Caddy is designed to place 2.5-inch drives, if you have a hard drive of that size, you can use it instead of a SATA SSD to replace your reader, in which case the tutorial will be carried out. exactly in the same way that we have told you.
