Replace DVD drive with HDD on my HP Pavilion laptop 15-ak102nl

[cossio]

I have an  HP Pavilion laptop 15-ak102nl. It comes with a DVD drive that I hardly use. I want to replace this DVD drive with a new HDD drive for storage.

What specifications does the HDD drive need to satisfy to be a valid replacement on this laptop?

[Huffer]

I generally discourage the use of hard drives in the space designed for the optical drive for a few reasons but generally it will work.

Here is the Service Manual:

Manual

Optical drive Fixed, serial ATA, 9.5-mm tray load

See p. 35 for how to on removing the DVD (optical) drive. 

It is a 9.5 mm thick drive so you need a 9.5 mm thick optical drive caddy like this:

https://www.amazon.com/Zheino-9-5mm-Aluminum-Adapter-Universal/dp/B01B77AXGA/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=...

Then you need a 2.5 inch wide hard drive no more than 9.5 mm thick:

https://www.amazon.com/Black-Performance-Mobile-Hard-Drive/dp/B01DOL05OC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1528...

You place the hard drive in the caddy and slide the caddy into the laptop in place of the DVD drive. You will not be able to boot from the hard drive but it should show up in Windows as a place for storage. Use disk management and partition and format the drive and assign it a drive letter and you can use it for storage. 

Post back with any more questions and please accept as solution if this is the answer you needed. 

[cossio]

Thanks for the reply. I am located in Italy. Can you please confirm that the following items will work:

https://www.amazon.it/WD10JPVX-Hard-Disk-Mobile-5400/dp/B00C9TEBJQ/ref=sr_1_6?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=15285...

https://www.amazon.it/Zheino-9-5MM-Alluminio-Universale-DVD-ROM/dp/B01B77AXGA/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid...

Thanks in advance.

Out of curiosity, can you point out the reasons why you generally discourage replacing the  the optical drive with a hard drive?

[Huffer]

Yes those items will work. I discourage it primarily because it is not an HP relacement part. The quality of the adapters that are sold varies widely. Every little back alley shop makes one. Occasionally people have trouble getting the system to recognize the drive in them. The disk will not be bootable and the interface for the DVD drive is slower than the one used for the hard drive in the system. DVD drives do not transfer data as fast as a hard drive so the interface can be slower. It adds significant weight to the laptop. I just do not see the need for large internal storage in this era of cloud storage. Nevertheless as I said as long as your expectations are modest it is probably going to work for you. 

Please accept as solution to make this thread more easily accessible to others with similar questions.