Can I replace the Optical drive of ENVY 15t-k000 with a hard drive?

[siriusblackp]

Hello!!

I just received the HP ENVY 15t-k000 http://www.shopping.hp.com/en_US/home-office/-/products/Laptops/HP-ENVY/G0T95AV?HP-ENVY-15t 

Can I replace the optical drive with an SSD (for example, Seagate 600 240G)? Thanks!

I saw there are several videos helping with removing the top cover and replacing the optical drive. But it does not specifically say that the optical drive can be replaced with a hard drive.

http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04324972

http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04334360

Thank you very much!

Best,

siriusblackp

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

Yes you can. Here is the part you need to do it with. Just remove the optical drive, add a hard drive into one of these adapters and replace it for the optical drive:

https://www.jacobsparts.com/items/HDDBAY-02/

You might also have to swap the faceplate of the old optical drive over to make the installation look good.

I would not use this for an SSD. An SSD belongs in the main drive space to take advantage of the speed. The drive in the optical drive adapter will not be bootable and it will not have data transfer speeds quite as fast as the main hard drive. So if you must have a drive in that adapter, a large (like 1 TB) and slow (5400 rpm) drive would be best. It  will be purely for storage and it is still fast enough to show video from for example but if you do video editing I would not try to edit videos from the optical drive bay. Move them to the faster drive first. 

If this is "the Answer" please click "Accept as Solution" to help others find it. 

[siriusblackp]

Dear Huffer,

Thank you very much for the detailed answer. I will follow your advice and put the 1T hdd to the optical drive and put the ssd to the main drive.

However, I do want want follow up on two more questions:

1. will it influence warranty?

2. The optical drive is a bit loose, i.e.  i can move it slightly up/down. When I replace it with hdd, will it still be loose? And if so, will it bring damage to the hard drive?

Thank you a lot!

Best,

siriusblackp

[Huffer]

Yes. This kind of modification is not consistent with the warranty. If you decide to move forward, I would shim the hard drive with a couple of thin strips of foam rubber (not over the vent holes) to make sure the drive is not able to slop around in the optical bay. 

[JasonBrown2004]

Hi, I have an Envy 15-k204na with 256GB SSD (embedded chip size). I bought a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB 2.5inch SSD to upgrade the 256GB SSD but when I opened up the laptop I realised the EVO could not directly replace the existing SSD. There is an empty slot where the 2.5" hdd would normally be placed, can I place the EVO here and add it as a 2nd drive (can it also be the primary).

Many thanks

Jason