Swap DVD for SSD on older Mobos

Hi folks
these days who really needs a DVD burner any more --if you really do need one then cheap external USB devices are available

So on Older Mobos you can use that DVD slot for a bootable SSD.

1) connect the DVD power adapter to a SATA power connector -- adapters are cheap enough !!. Connect that to the power bit of the SSD (the one with most pins).

2) connect the sata connector to either a sata slot on the mobo --or if you don't have any spare slots a 4 port sata pci card (half height also available) will do --these cards cost almost nothing.

Voila -- nice fast bootable SSD on your machine without losing any older HDD space you have -- you don't need to remove the older HDD's to make room for the SSD. Also easy to swap - just have the SSD in the DVD tray.


Cheers
jimbo

Jimbo, you can even do this on a laptop with an optical drive. You can purchase a caddy that has the form of a laptop optical drive. There are two different optical drive sizes available for laptops, either 9.5mm or 12.7mm thick so you just need to make sure that you get the correct caddy for your system.

Then, it's a simple matter to remove the optical drive, put an SSD or spinning HD in the caddy, remove the face plate from the optical drive (carefully so you don't break any tabs!), attach it to the caddy, then pop that into the system.

In my particular instance, I did this with an old HP laptop. I replaced the spinning HD with an SSD so I get nice fast boot times, and replaced the optical drive with a large spinning disk. So now I have both fast boot for Windows and plenty of storage on the spinning disk.