Reddit mentions of Protronix SATA Optical Bay 2nd Hard Drive Caddy, Universal for 9.5mm CD/DVD Drive Slot (for SSD and HDD)

You can buy a hard drive caddy to replace the unneeded cd drive and have a 2nd internal hard drive in your laptop. Amazon Has them for 10 bucks. In my laptop I Have a SSD for my OS and have a 1Tb in the cd drive for movies, music & pics.

It depends on where you're going and what shots you want.

Are you planning to go to Udawalawe? If so, your kit lens will do for the most part, but do bring a telephoto to get some of the wildlife shots esp. the birds. Depending on the guide and timing, you can actually get pretty damn close to the elephants for example: http://i.imgur.com/fhtcL6z.jpg. However, there are other things like birds you can't really get without a telephoto.

For example, if you're going to Polonnaruwa and want to take shots of the monkeys, you need a telephoto. You don't want to get very close to these bastards despite them being used to people and coming pretty close to people. I have a bunch of shots from here, but these are not on my phone unfortunately, so can't upload them. edit: Found a few more pics: http://imgur.com/a/eqEg1

Pic 3 - I wish I had a fast zoom. You can clearly see the issues with the image in low light. This + bad tripod + no IS (older kit lens) on the lens = bad time.

Pic 4 - Frescos are pretty cool and there were places where I couldn't get multiple of them in to one shot like I wanted. A wide angle would help. I can imagine a few cool macro shots of the frescos as well, but I wasn't really able to do that due to equipment limitations.

For landscape hots of say Polonnaruwa or Sigiriya or Mackwoods other places, you definitely should go with a wide angle. The Canon 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM is under $300 and probably your best bet when it comes to price vs performance. It's by no mean the absolute best wide angle lens, but it's pretty cheap and offer good performance.

Your f2.8/1.8s will come in very handy, especially if you want to take inside shots of say the Dalada Maligawa. I really wished I had a fast lens when I went.

Also, if you're going to the Peradeniya Botanical Garden, either bring a macro lens or extension tubes. You may also want to invest in a GoPro (or a Xiaomi Yi, make sure you get a real one and not a counterfeit). I wished I had a GoPro or similar action cam to record say the ascend/descend for Sigiriya.

And bring LOTS of batteries AND a DC to AC car inverter in the 100-200W range so you can charge your stuff on the go. My relatives told me to bring this, and it was invaluable while traveling to charge my camera batteries, laptop and phone. I used this one: http://smile.amazon.com/Outlets-Inverter-Charging-Smartphones-Tablets/dp/B004MDXS0U/

DO bring a laptop and external HDD/SSD for backing up. I would personally go with a 500GB or larger SSD now as things can get rough on a HDD while traveling. I had 2x500GB SSDs (swapped out DVD RW to 2nd HDD cage see: http://www.smile.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Caddy-Universal/dp/B004XIUQYA/, make sure you get the right sized one) on my laptop, and had an 2TB HDD. Backed up photos/videos to both of these.


Things I wish I brought:

• A good tripod, I got a cheap light weight $40ish one, and it really showed. This was really apparent at Sigiriya when the wind picked up. I couldn't even do 1/2sec shots as the camera moved just enough in the wind to blur things. Invest in a good tripod.
  
  
• Macro lens or extension tubes. Particularly wished I had this at the botanical gardens and a few other places.
  
  
• Action cam, see above
  
  
• A Lifestraw. Got sick for like a few days probably because of bad water. I was careful about the food, but still got a bug. DO be careful of the food AND the water. There are places that will sell refilled water bottles that have local unboiled/unpurified water, so be careful. Make sure you break the seal yourself. Or just use the Lifestraw water bottle. See: http://smile.amazon.com/LifeStraw-Bottle-Integrated-1000-Liter-Filter/dp/B00H90PFOK/
  
  
• Bring a small first aid kit or just buy locally when you get there. Got a few cuts and scratches on the field (slipped while not paying attention lol) and had to improvise bandaid using some tape + paper lol.
  
  
• Wide angle lens. Some of the shots at Sigiriya frescos and just landscapes in general would have been nice with a good wide angle lens.
  
  
• Fast lenses for low light indoor work. Really missed this. But you have this covered pretty well.
  
  
• Extra SD cards. I brought 5 64GB cards, but I did video on my camera as well, so the cards filled up fast. I brought back roughly 300GB worth of stuff (after culling) and moving them on to the laptop was a bit inconvenient as the cards filled up but not too big of a deal. HIGHLY recommend buying a GOOD external HDD or SSD + enclosure to backup your stuff.
  
  
• A notebook. I didn't bring one, but bought one locally after the first day of shooting to write down thoughts/plans,etc. More convenient than typing up on the laptop/phone.
  
  
  Source: Been there, done that. Spent about 4ish weeks in June/July. Traveled to Udawalawe, Polonnaruwa, Sigiriya, Mackwoods and Peradeniya. I didn't spend a lot of time in the big cities like Colombo, so can't really comment on cityscape stuff. I traveled with my aunts, cousins, uncles, etc who live/lived in Sri Lanka so they knew their way around stuff which made it a lot easy to get to places. PM me or ask here if you have any questions.
  
  Well, that's a lot longer than I expected... hope this helps OP!

I agree with /u/IRBMe - the culprit is most likely the hard drive. like he said, the CPU/GPU don't throttle performance unless they are overheating and RAM either works or fails with blue screens, but an aging HDD will definitely sow things down. changing the paste won't make any difference.

Another thing to check on is your mobo and graphics drivers.. outdated or incorrect drivers can cause some major slowdowns too.

Go SSD! it will be faster than ever before, cooler, and less noisy. 128 or 250 gb is enough for windows and a host of progs, and if you need more disk space but don't wanna splurge on a 500gb or 1tb SSD, look into getting an "optical drive bay SSD/HDD caddy" - it replaces the DVD drive (which is rarely use for most folks) with a HDD or SSD of your choice.

for instance in my laptop i replaced the HDD with a 128gb SSD (big performance boost for the old girl), and then installed the old 500gb HDD in the drive caddy as a secondary for more storage. (after a good format, of course) If the rare occasion arises that i need to read or burn a dvd, i just pop out the caddy and slide the dvd drive back in temporarily.

One time I had Windows (XP or 7 can't remember) randomly trash an Ubuntu partition. Since then I have always kept the two OS's on separate drives. It's easy to do on a desktop. On a laptop, I get an adapter to let me keep a second drive in the DVD drive compartment. Then I make sure the computer boots to the ubuntu drive and re-grub it so it can add the windows OS option to the grub boot menu.

I know this is an old post but just for the people that are looking this up and found this post:

I bought this laptop and it is possible to add an ssd or an additional hdd. You'll need to pick up a 9.5mm caddy.

You need a caddy like this

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004XIUQYA?pc_redir=1412519359&robot_redir=1

To add:

To access HDD, ram, and DVD drive you need to remove entire bottom panel (18 screws I think someone said).

Since there is no DVD drive you can buy this http://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Caddy-Universal/dp/B004XIUQYA/ref=sr_1_3_m?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1450357752 and put your 5400rpm in that and buy an SSD as main drive (the interface is only sata2 for the DVD drive connector, so don't put SSD in that).

You can undervolt the CPU (I was able to get -100mV. YMMV). This will make CPU cooler and use less power so slight battery life increase. You can also under clock and undervolt the integrated graphics for more battery life.
Used Intel extreme utility for this.

You can also overclock the GPU using nvidia inspector or MSI afterburner. (I got +120core/+115mem. YMMV). After over clocked it was running no higher then 60C. I have a laptop cooler.

I would recommend a laptop cooler with this laptop, not because it runs hot, but because there is lots of ventilation holes on the bottom with direct airflow over the heatsink from the bottom. So it will be very effective.

Use something like this. Works like a charm. https://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Caddy-Universal/dp/B004XIUQYA?th=1

This is what mine looks likes

Also this.

No, the HP dv7 7000 series has 2 HDD bays, 1 SSD slot and I removed the Blue Ray player and added another HDD with one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Caddy-Universal/dp/B004XIUQYA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414024502&sr=8-1&keywords=optical+drive+hdd+bay

I would also recommend using the internal USB port for ESXI install, that's what its there for.


If you really want to use a SATA drive for the ESXI install and you have a dvd drive I would get an adapter that allows you to use the power and data connections from that. Link


Also on you question of "incompatible card in storage PCIE", yes, you can move it to a normal pcie slot and it will work.

Okay brother, here's the dealio. First a disclaimer. If you have $50 in the bank, and have to have this laptop for school or work, don't even risk it. I was successful, and I'm happy I did it now that it is all back together. But it was scary. There were several instances where I was really worried about breaking something irreparably. If you've got enough money to buy something else, and just have the itch to upgrade this machine and the confidence to do so, here are the parts I bought:

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-PC3-12800-204-Pin-Notebook-CT102464BF160B/dp/B006YG8X9Y?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

http://www.amazon.com/Protronix-Optical-Drive-Caddy-Universal/dp/B004XIUQYA?ie=UTF8&psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00

What I ended up doing is putting the SSD where the HDD is now, and putting the HDD in the caddy. The bezel from the original drive can be removed and placed on the caddy. Just dig your fingernails underneath the top of the bezel and pull outward and downward. I was worried about it breaking, but it'll come off.

Also, the RAM was a pain in the butt until I realized how to install it. To remove the 4gb stick, I pulled the little clips <-- outward --> with my middle fingers, and pulled the ram forward with my pointer finger.

To install the 8gb chip, just insert it down into the slot, then push backwards towards the motherboard. It will just click into place. Took me about 15 minutes to figure out.

When you go to reinstall the ribbon cables for the keyboard and trackpad, there are little black plastic clips that clip down onto the cable and hold it into place. The bigger cable is fairly easy to get back in. The smaller cable was harder for me. I recommend holding the keyboard up like a book (left side on the table, right side in the air) instead of like a calendar (back side on the table, front side in the air). You'll see what I mean when you get there.

Other than that, just pay a lot of attention to the video. He does a good job explaining the actually dis-assembly process.

https://youtu.be/ByyYIzs6Cs8

And seriously guys, if you've never done this before (like me) and breaking this laptop is going to make you cry, don't even try it. It's a great laptop for the money. You don't always have to have more, more, more.

I plan on a similar upgrade!

RAM €94
SSD €442
Caddy for mbp original hard drive. €9
Enclosure to make use of the disc drive. €11

Total: €556

Can you guys tell me if these are suitable upgrade parts for an early 2013 mbp? Thanks in advance.

I got a laptop with a 1TB HDD in it, replaced that with a 256GB SSD, then swapped the ODD out for one of these adapters
and put the 1TB it came with in there.

Note those adapters come in different thicknesses, make sure you're getting the right size for your laptop.

Best of both worlds at the cheapest price.

I was just poking around on youtube and found that I could remove the Optical Drive and get a HDD enclosure that fills that space.

We think these Asus laptops have the optical drive, but there's a good second option. You could simply remove the optical drive and use the space for the SSD, as shown in this video. You'll just need to buy this optical drive caddy in order to get a good fit.

This way, you'll have a laptop with however much ram you'd like to install, 1TB HDD + SSD all for under your budget with a really nice IPS screen.

i believe most laptops can do this. I did this with my Sony. Just figure out which height for the caddy you need.

http://www.amazon.com/SATA-caddy-12-7mm-Universal-DVD-ROM/dp/B0056EW4A4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345847208&sr=8-1&keywords=hdd+caddy

http://www.amazon.com/JacobsParts%C2%AE-9-5mm-Optical-Drive-Adapter/dp/B004XIUQYA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345847267&sr=8-1&keywords=hdd+caddy+9.5

Since you're mentioning replacing your optical drive with an ssd, you would need an adapter. On laptops the optical drive uses a different connector than the hard drive.

I've been looking at the Dell Inspiron 17 7000 series laptop (7737) --

17 in Touchscreen Full HD display.
NVIDIA 750M Graphics
4th Gen. Intel i7-4510U
I think all models include 1TB HDD

Only thing is, it only has one HDD bay. However, you can always purchase an HDD caddy that fits the CD bay, if giving up the CD drive for the extra HDD is an option for you.

Can be bought for around 1,000 brand new direct from Dell. I've seen as low as 800 on eBay for these specs for "open box" sale with 1YR Dell in-home warranty.

So, if you bought this, say for around 1,000, that leaves around $500 in your budget for a kick-ass SSD.



Full disclosure: I'm a contracted employee for Dell/Unisys. I do not receive kickbacks for recommending Dell.

Hm I'm not too sure about the sizing (plus it looks like the cd drive is one of those slit drives, so not sure how removable it is?), but maybe something like these or this?

This sub isn't for notebooks, there's nothing to build. I'm not familiar with this laptop model, if RAM is replaceable it must be pretty staightforward, if there's two slots then just add another SO-DIMM DDR4 4GB stick, if there's only one then get 8GB stick. If you want to add SSD there's two options, if this laptop has M.2 slot (i pretty sure it is) then get some M.2 SATA SSD (as i'm not sure if it'll support NVMe), if there's no M.2 and you don't need optical drive you can get optical to 2.5" caddy and install 2.5" SATA SSD in there.

But most importantly, this isn't going to help much with gaming, you can't replace the CPU and this laptop uses integrated CPU's graphics. Sell that laptop, save a bit more and you can get a good entry-level gaming PC for 600-700$ from scratch.