Drive Question

[Stingray]

Question:

My buddy has an A31 which has a burned out motherboard = paperweight = doorstop...... That A31 happens to have a CD-RW/DVD drive. Would it work on an R52 or a T43 that just has a simple CD drive?? Are the bays similar??? Or would I need some sort of an adapter?
Much thanks…

[tfflivemb2]

It might work directly. If not, then you might be able to remove the caddy around each of the two drives and then switch the two around.

Edit: you might need to change the face plates too

[shadowlight]

It will not work!
A31 uses regular-sized Ultrabay drives.
T43 uses Ultrabay slim which is thinner - so no adapter will work!
Same thing with R52 which uses Ultrabay Enhanced which is thinner than a regular Ultrabay but not as thin as a Ultrabay slim.
Therefore you can use a Ultrabay Slim with adapter to fit in an Ultrabay Enhanced Slot and you can use an Ultrabay Enhanced drive with adapter to fit in an Ultrabay or Ultrabay 2000 Slot - but not the other way around!

(joke on) You can put your Ultrabay drive on the earth and jump on it to make it thinner! Maybe it will fit in the Ultrabay Slim Slot, but will it work afterwards??? (joke off)

You can try to find an "Portable Drive Bay" (it was discontinued about 2 years ago, but some are still available) which is an independend Ultrabay slot which connects to your laptop via USB 1.0! Speed is the problem with this solution, so I think it may be better to sell the drive on ebay and buy a new external USB2-CD/DVD-burner.

P.S. which kind of screen has the A31? was it Flexview? was it without any bad pixel? If yes I might be interested to buy it as a spare part!

[tfflivemb2]

Hmm, interesting. Good to know, I could have sworn that I read somewhere that physical drive itself would fit, that the casing around the drive is what made the drive thicker, so to speak....although, I haven't tried it myself.