Laptop refuses to recognize Optical Bay Hard Drive Caddy?

[MattCurtis]

I've gone through several of these caddys.

My laptop (a Lenovo G500) continually has the same problem; it refuses to recognize the HD I connect to it using an Optical Bay Caddy I purchased on eBay (I've tried several, it does this with all of them). The first time I connected it it saw the Hard Drive and worked perfectly. I rebooted and it hasn't shown up in the BIOS's Boot Screen or anywhere else since.

Here are some pictures of the caddy itself: https/imgur.com/a/qEXbq#0

Related BIOS configuration screens: https/imgur.com/Xmv8ZIx,bq46dDy,Ofcp0XW,6RFCQVn,RK28jpN

Laptop specs:

System: Lenovo G500 CPU: Intel Core i3-3120M CPU @ 2.50GHz Dual-Core
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000, 1366 x 768

What could be causing this?

 

[Harrison Whitmarsh]

Hello Matt Curtis and welcome to Toms!

First of all, I am laughing heartily at this contraption, as I never knew they existed, talk about AWESOME!
I'm going to assume a few things as I have not had hands-on experience with one of these caddys. First, I would assume that the SATA connector inside of the caddy itself is the exact same (if not similar) connector shipped with the PC, which means that they are essentially plug-n-play. I'm also going to assume that you have tested this drive thoroughly to make sure that it should not have any problems recognizing the drive, no matter the connection type. With the "ass-out-of-you-and-me" steps behind us, time for some fun.

A few testing steps:
Step 1: Make sure that your BIOS is setup to boot from your original HDD, the one currently connected through your default SATA connection. (Can you see the second drive in BIOS?)
Step 2: Boot the PC, does it boot without a hitch?
Step 3: When you open "My Computer" or what have you, the second drive should show up just like any other drive would, and I'm assuming this is where you are not seeing it.
Step 4: Open Device Manager (devmgmt.msc in run) and open the "Disk Drives" tab, do you see the drives that you should be seeing?
Step 5: If the drive is not showing up in Device Manager, then we have a problem. ANY device, whether it has drivers or not, should show up in device manager; if they are not showing up in device manager at all, then the PC it self cannot SEE the device. If it cannot see the device, your issue is a bad connect from your new SATA connector, or a bad set of pins on the drive itself, or maybe even a bad board on the HDD.

The steps I listed above are not fool-proof as there are MANY other steps we can take, but try those, and tell me what you see! Thanks, and chat with you soon!

- Harrison Whitmarsh
Lincoln Nebraska USA

 

[MattCurtis]

Hello Matt Curtis and welcome to Toms!

First of all, I am laughing heartily at this contraption, as I never knew they existed, talk about AWESOME!
I'm going to assume a few things as I have not had hands-on experience with one of these caddys. First, I would assume that the SATA connector inside of the caddy itself is the exact same (if not similar) connector shipped with the PC, which means that they are essentially plug-n-play. I'm also going to assume that you have tested this drive thoroughly to make sure that it should not have any problems recognizing the drive, no matter the connection type. With the "ass-out-of-you-and-me" steps behind us, time for some fun.

A few testing steps:
Step 1: Make sure that your BIOS is setup to boot from your original HDD, the one currently connected through your default SATA connection. (Can you see the second drive in BIOS?)
Step 2: Boot the PC, does it boot without a hitch?
Step 3: When you open "My Computer" or what have you, the second drive should show up just like any other drive would, and I'm assuming this is where you are not seeing it.
Step 4: Open Device Manager (devmgmt.msc in run) and open the "Disk Drives" tab, do you see the drives that you should be seeing?
Step 5: If the drive is not showing up in Device Manager, then we have a problem. ANY device, whether it has drivers or not, should show up in device manager; if they are not showing up in device manager at all, then the PC it self cannot SEE the device. If it cannot see the device, your issue is a bad connect from your new SATA connector, or a bad set of pins on the drive itself, or maybe even a bad board on the HDD.

The steps I listed above are not fool-proof as there are MANY other steps we can take, but try those, and tell me what you see! Thanks, and chat with you soon!

- Harrison Whitmarsh
Lincoln Nebraska USA

Hello Harrison, thanks for the reply!

Yes - they're quite handy, especially if you're dual-booting or need extra storage. Or they would be, if they'd work with my machine! 😀

None of the HDs I've tried with the caddy have shown up anywhere in the BIOS - not the boot selection screen, and not the BIOS configuration screens... It's only worked once for me, and that was when I first installed it. Since then it hasn't been visible to the BIOS/computer. All of the HDs work fine when attached to the laptop via a USB enclosure/adapter.

I'll test the Device Manager thing as soon as I get a chance, do you think it will show up there, even if it doesn't show up in the BIOS?

 

[Harrison Whitmarsh]

Hello again!

Hmm, it doesn't show up in the BIOS... most HDD's WILL and SHOULD show up in the BIOS, regardless of software. Some very picky brands need special loving care to show up, but that is few and far between; the likely-hood that all of your drives are picky is low.

Here are a couple questions to help lower the usual suspects:

1: Your original Optical Drive, did it function flawlessly? Did you ever have issues with it?
2: Did the manufacturer of the HDD Optical Drive say anything regarding "Plug-N-Play" or "Driver Installs"? Basically did they give you any instructions..
3: What is the connector that you are plugging this new Optical Drive into? Some manufacturers use SATA connections, and then when you slide the optical drive in, it just clicks into place; HP on the other hand likes to use proprietary pin setups. Is the pin setup "different" or SATA?
4: Have you looked up these HDD's online to see if there are any extra drivers needed? USB tends to install said drivers automatically but this Optical Drive may not. (LONG freaking shot right here).

These are really the only things that come to mind right now, but this is what I think: Taking a special pin setup and then plugging in a SATA adapter to it, and then an HDD onto that is a pretty long daisy-chain without drivers, and that is concerning. I would think that the SATA connection itself should have come with some sort of driver to make it communicate correctly with that random pins setup that Lenovo probably uses. I think it is pretty safe to say though that the machine is not accepting input through that SATA plug though, why, who knows.

Talk to you soon!

- Harrison Whitmarsh
Lincoln Nebraska USA

 

[alex2740]

I had the same issue and solved it by disabling "Intel Virtualization Technology" in BIOS.

Hope that helps

 

[Hitch_Rait]

I had the same issue and solved it by disabling "Intel Virtualization Technology" in BIOS.

Hope that helps

Thanks for advice! But it worked the other way...
Had same problem, checked Intel Virtualization Technology, but it was already disabled.
I enabled it and hdd was recognized.

 

[Mehedy]

I've gone through several of these caddys.

My laptop (a Lenovo G500) continually has the same problem; it refuses to recognize the HD I connect to it using an Optical Bay Caddy I purchased on eBay (I've tried several, it does this with all of them). The first time I connected it it saw the Hard Drive and worked perfectly. I rebooted and it hasn't shown up in the BIOS's Boot Screen or anywhere else since.

Here are some pictures of the caddy itself: https/imgur.com/a/qEXbq#0

Related BIOS configuration screens: https/imgur.com/Xmv8ZIx,bq46dDy,Ofcp0XW,6RFCQVn,RK28jpN

Laptop specs:

System: Lenovo G500 CPU: Intel Core i3-3120M CPU @ 2.50GHz Dual-Core
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000, 1366 x 768

What could be causing this?

Have you solved it? If not you can change the position of switch button of your caddy. It is located near the connector pin

 

[jeroent]

I have solved it by using a SATA300 harddisk instead of a SATA600. The quality of the internal SATA cable in this laptop isn't that great, so perhaps it can't handle the SATA600 speed.

 

[nklincarov]

I've gone through several of these caddys.

My laptop (a Lenovo G500) continually has the same problem; it refuses to recognize the HD I connect to it using an Optical Bay Caddy I purchased on eBay (I've tried several, it does this with all of them). The first time I connected it it saw the Hard Drive and worked perfectly. I rebooted and it hasn't shown up in the BIOS's Boot Screen or anywhere else since.

Here are some pictures of the caddy itself: https/imgur.com/a/qEXbq#0

Related BIOS configuration screens: https/imgur.com/Xmv8ZIx,bq46dDy,Ofcp0XW,6RFCQVn,RK28jpN

Laptop specs:

System: Lenovo G500 CPU: Intel Core i3-3120M CPU @ 2.50GHz Dual-Core
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000, 1366 x 768

What could be causing this?

Have you solved it? If not you can change the position of switch button of your caddy. It is located near the connector pin

Hey Mehedy, what changes with presing the switch? Do we have solution on the issue/
/

 

[emre-yurtseven]

I have the same problem. I couldn't solve it. My HDD in cdrom caddy, doesn't seem in both bios and device manager. I don't know waht to do. Yes there is a switch on caddy. there are three modes. I use the middle mode. It was working at the beginning. But now hdd doesnt seem in anywhere.

 

[emre-yurtseven]

now i enabled Virtualization Technology. My HDD seem in bios. But still not in device manager and my computer

 

[nafees.hasan75]

Hi, I want to direct all of you people's attention to the problem that optical drive communicates with bios to tell it whether the tray is open or not. If the tray is open , reading from disk is stopped. That is why when you put HDD or SSD into that slot using incompatible solution, BIOS thinks the tray is open and stops read/write. This problem is mentioned on caddy website(I can't find the page right now but I have read it). They say it is why they let you choose brand and models on their website to sell you compatible caddy. They implement some circuit to send the signal that tray is always closed. Probably that is the function of that button on some of the caddy replicas available on aliexpress and ebay.

 

[livium10]

Thank you ! Virtualization Technology checking solved the problem.

 

[matikrzo]

Well, I bought the caddy in June 2017, coudn't make it work, BIOS just didn't recognize it.

Yesterday, I remembered about it so I tried to find out how to solve the problem.

Last time research didn't guide me to this thread, you made me realise about the existence of the little switch, sadly, didn't do anything. So I decided to try enabling or disabling "Intel Virtualization Technology" in BIOS.

Since in my BIOS I can only decided from which drive to boot, I've had to customize the BIOS firmware to be able to screw around with those settings. Yet, didn't work. Modified every SATA setting, nothing.

Here's the thing.
Frustrated, I decided to go to the basics. The caddy is thinner compared to the optical drive, I didn't thought that it could make contact issue between the SATA 7+6 connectors, but I think it did. I put some shiets of paper folded to make them equal in size and the BIOS recognized the drive, couldn't believe it.

So, watch for this kind of things. Hope this will be useful for someone. Thanks.

 

[matikrzo]

Something else, be aware of the switch in the caddy, don't know why but when it's set in one position makes the process System to load the CPU at 25% in idle. Something about the driver ACPI is messing around. So if after the installation of the caddy your PC is feeling slow, change the switch set. Unbelieavable nonsense... but true.

 

[deivydas.tvm]

Something else, be aware of the switch in the caddy, don't know why but when it's set in one position makes the process System to load the CPU at 25% in idle. Something about the driver ACPI is messing around. So if after the installation of the caddy your PC is feeling slow, change the switch set. Unbelieavable nonsense... but true.

Hello, the switch is for different PC makers as some do their own adjustments. It should mentioned on the box. The one I had was like Position A DELL laptops, Position B Fujitsu Position 3 Lenovo, Sony, hp and other brands

 

[riekpieters]

If bios opt.controller is not capable of booting a legacy mbr caddy-drive, then keep system only uefi or CSM. To solve no-booting of the os of the caddy-drive from the optical bay port, you have to install a multi boot program in the os at the 1st boot drive. Such a program is easybcd. It gives warnings, but you may ignore that. Thereafter Set the 2nd os as default booting in multiboot program. Experienced users may want to edit the bcd file in ESP partition:\Efi\Microsoft\Boot\BCD with program BootICE, so use of easybdc is not necessary.

 

[riekpieters]

"If bios opt.controller is not capable of booting a legacy mbr caddy-drive, then keep system only uefi or CSM. To solve no-booting of the os of the caddy-drive from the optical bay port, you have to install a multi boot program in the os at the 1st boot drive. Such a program is easybcd. It gives warnings, but you may ignore that. Thereafter Set the 2nd os as default booting in multiboot program. Experienced users may want to edit the bcd file in ESP partition:\Efi\Microsoft\Boot\BCD with program BootICE, so use of easybdc is not necessary."

HP Pavilion 17 notebook PC with Windows 10 on Caddy-SSD as default multi boot OS, starting...
https/hpieters.stackstorage.com/s/0VdAq2gpV3tIhN2

 

[alf1976]

SOLVED : Samsung EVO 850 SSD SATA III working in Optical Drive now.

MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011) - 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7.

I have SSD as main drive and a HDD in "Optical Drive", But it was taking too much battery/ too much noise. I put a new Samsung 860 EVO 500GB SATA III SSD in optical drive. For some reason it was not showing anything!!!

After reading some post , I realized that my caddy is not SATA III compatible. So I clicked on the link provided https/www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004FM...

It looked exactly like my previous caddy but something inside, a chip or something is new. Make sure seller is "HIGHFINE".

NOTE : After installing new Caddy in optical drive with SSD Sata III, I started computer and was able to see SSD in DISK UTILITY. I initialized/ formatted it. BUT drive was showing in some weird small size. I restarted Laptop and it came on FINE.