Found this old DVD driver in the garage that looks like it was from a laptop. I’d like to use it, but I don’t know what port is that.

I thought it was SATA, but it’s a little bit more taller and narrow, maybe an old revision? Or is it HP proprietary?

Any help is appreciated!

  • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)
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    3 months ago

    Slimline SATA.

    Usual for laptop DVD drives. Can be directly converted to regular SATA with an adapter (I have one of those).
    Alternatively, you can find a caddy for it on AliExpress for around 6 bucks. Pay attention to the height, there’s 12.7mm and 9.5mm drives.
    I bought this one: https://a.aliexpress.com/_Ewv1ers

    • MrLLM@ani.socialOP
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      3 months ago

      Woah, thank you!

      Pay attention to the height, there’s 12.7mm and 9.5mm drives.

      I’ll keep that in mind!

      • Tippon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 months ago

        Just to add, you can get hard drive adaptors that fit in the same slot too, so you can have extra storage. They come in a DVD drive shaped caddy with pass through connectors for a laptop SATA drive 🙂

        • MrLLM@ani.socialOP
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          3 months ago

          Thank you for the tip. I’ll definitely look into that, do you recommend any in particular?

          • f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz
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            3 months ago

            I love these, far more useful than an optical drive. The only difference between them will be the bezel, which varies to fit different laptops’ shapes. They are completely passive; no components except maybe a capacitor to prevent a power surge when hot-swapping.

    • Zorsith@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      3 months ago

      To add to that, since its an HP branded one, it might have a special front bezel to go to a specific laptop model. Those bezels are removable with just a couple clips.

      AFAIK, HP doesn’t actually manufacture the drives themselves, just the bezel. They just slap an HP branded sticker on there.

      I was trying to get a specific bezel for a zbook for a little while and HP wants like, $100+ for a damn piece of plastic they already have in stock