Build your own drive?

[jronald]

Not sure if this has been posted, but I was floored!
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_bu ... aBay_drive

Ron

[Brad]

I think other forum members have done this with great success.

Brad

[rkawakami]

Whoa, déjà vu ! (Just sent an email to Brad related to this very subject a little while ago ).

There's several threads here that discuss this type of project. This one is one of the latest that I remember:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=62291

but there are some others:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=28697
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=36226
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=47890

As noted in the ThinkWiki article, one of the things to worry about is the front bezel, or what the author refers to as the "blending". Ultraslimbay, as used in the 600-series, has the usual fully rectangular opening. The Ultrabay 2000, on the other hand, cannot have anything on the front panel in the lower right corner; it needs to match the outline of the drive's case in order to fit inside the 2000 bay. I have yet to try modifying a "standard" 9.5mm height optical drive into an Ultrabay Slim (T4x, for example) so I don't know what to watch out for in that case.

[Kaervak]

I think other forum members have done this with great success.

Brad

Yep. Did exactly that with my NEC ND-6650A in my T23. Pulled the rails and backplane off an existing optical drive, put them on the NEC and works perfectly fine. I did have to cut a notch in the bezel to get a solid connection to the motherboard, but it looks quite good.