Speed of SSD inside DVD drive caddy ?

[Huffer]

I think you have proven my point and proven the doubters and naysayers wrong. SSD in an optical caddy 9 times out of 10 is a bad idea. Not sure what else to say. 

[Digerati]

Sorry Huffer but I don't see the problem. It certainly is not an ideal situation, but if you cannot open the case  to remove the old hard drive because the brass nuts are stripped, then adding a SSD via the optical caddy is not a bad idea.

In fact, please note there are optical caddy to drive adapters just for this purpose! So what's the harm? Why a "bad" idea? Such a solution would  provide power and a data connection via "SATA" - which I hope we can agree would be better than an external "USB" enclosure.

UserKalle, the OP, asked, "So... Is the new SSD inside DVD drive caddy: Samsung 860EVO 500GB still faster than the 5200rpm when used as a main drive inside DVD caddy ?"

The answer is a resounding yes! Even the slowest SSD (and the 860 EVO is no slouch) can run circles around the fastest hard drive (and no 5200 RPM drive would be considered quick).

As far as Indkan's performance issues - we don't have enough information to come to any conclusion. We don't even know which HP notebook he has. There are many possible causes for poor speeds when trying to clone a HD, including the amount of system RAM installed, the processor, interfaces and more - reasons that have nothing to do with the destination drive itself, in this case, a SSD.

[indkan]

The laptop model is HP 15-ac044TU 15.6-inch Laptop (Core i3 5010U/4GB/500GB/DOS/Intel HD Graphics 5500).

Cloning using minitool and aomei were slow giving me 2-3 MB/s, so I dropped that plan and tried just normal copy of data from internal HDD to the new SSD, it was the same speed.

I checked for any loose connections and all looked good. 

I bought the highest rated dvd caddy from amazon uk.

My initial worry was not the speed of cloning, I assumed it was due to some hdd to ssd cloning software process, but when it continued failing to boot from new ssd, I had to try to use it as hdd and then found its too slow to use.

And again, I have the same problem as Digerati, one screw is just spinning on its groove and unable to remove the cover fully to check SSD directly on the hdd slot.

After seeing effortless cloning videos in youtube, I wanted to do the same to give some life in to the old laptop, poor me.

[Digerati]

You really should not make any conclusions based on "cloning" performance. Cloning is a very complex, disk intensive operation that involves reading, writing, and verifying small chunks of data at a time. This takes time - especially with large disks. The i3 5010U is not a very quick processor, and 4GB of RAM is not a lot of RAM, especially when some of that is likely stolen... err... being "shared" by the graphics solution. And of course, the OS itself is consuming a lot of CPU and RAM resources during this process too.

The real measure comes when running installed programs from the SSD.

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@indkan wrote:

And again, I have the same problem as Digerati, one screw is just spinning on its groove...

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Well, the OP, not me but point taken.

[indkan]

No, Im not concluding only on the basis of cloning.

After few attempts at unable to boot from SSD, I dropped the plan of cloning and booting from SSD, and wanted to use SSD as an additional storage for photos/videos. I tried to copy the existing data from main HDD to dvdbay SSD and got the same copy speed of 2-3MB/s, thats when I was skeptical and started searching the net and landed on this forum.

My problem is very slow transfer speed between main HDD to dvdbay SSD on a normal copy paste operation.

[Huffer]

This is not unexpected. On most models any storage disk in that optical bay adapter is not going to be bootable on most models with a very few exceptions that apparently do not include yours. And the interface of the mini-SATA port used for the optical drive can be as slow as SATA-I. 2-3 Mbps is unexpectedly slow, however. I might put try a standard mechanical hard drive in there if you have one. We could likely help get that screw/bolt out so you could get the SSD inside the laptop. So it is stripped?

A technician would tap it by drilling into the screw head with a very fine bit and then trying to pull it up enough to clip the head off if it is just spinning in place. Then you can pull the rest of the screw out with pliers. 

[indkan]

I could unscrew all but one. The tough screw is near to one of the monitor/battery hinge, not brave to pry it open by force and make the laptop not fit back properly. As of now, I ordered an external enclosure to use the ssd as usb drive 😐.

[Digerati]

Again, the real measure is running programs from the SSD, or even saving files to the SSD. Cloning and copying files from a HD to another drive is a totally different process and can take a long time because it involves reading a small chunk of data from the source drive, writing that chunk to the destination drive, then verifying the data was correctly copied. Then the file tables need to be updated too. This again really has very little to do with the fact you are talking about the destination drive being a SSD. I suspect if your destination drive was a HD, you would have similar performance issues.

[indkan]

My test case was to have SSD as boot disk, i couldnt achieve it, then second option was to use as an additional internal storage, but that again is not met.

I have added additional storages in PC and disk to disk HDD transfer speeds are faster than usb speeds, but in this case, internal HDD to internal SSD is slower than slowest usb/memory card, which makes it not worthwhile keeping it inside the laptop. 

[Huffer]

The HDD would be an effort to see if maybe there is an issue with the particular SSD the OP is trying to use. Yes, theoretically the transfer speed to the HDD should be even slower than to an SSD but if its not then maybe an issue with this particular SSD. 

The real problem here is that the SSD cannot be booted so it does the OP very little benefit.