How to Change the Caddy on a Laptop CD Drive
These instructions explain how to install a new CD, DVD, CD-RW, DVD-RW, Combo, etc drive in the caddy for your existing drive. This example shows how to install a Toshiba CD-RW drive into the caddy for an IBM Thinkpad 600. While the description has plenty of pictures, this is for clarity, not because its a complicated process. In many laptops this process could involve removing and replacing as few as 8 screws.
These instructions should apply for essentially any CD/DVD/etc drive which is designed to be removable and exchangeable from your laptop (so any drive that can be swapped with a floppy drive, battery, etc). Some laptops have their CD drives permanently built-in, in which case changing the drive will mean dismantling your laptop. This can still be something you can do yourself, but it will be significantly more complicated than the simple process illustrated here.
In order to do this installation you will need a small Phillips head screwdriver as illustrated in the picture below. In some cases a Stanley knife as illustrated may also be necessary to trim the front-plate of the new drive to fit into your laptop. Importantly, no extra parts are needed - you just reuse the caddy from your existing drive to mount the new drive in your laptop.
For this example we will change the mounting on a Matsushita UJDA720 DVD/CD-RW combo drive. This drive has been taken from a Toshiba PA3162A-1CD2 drive - which is designed to fit into a Toshiba Portege 4010 laptop. This drive, in its Toshiba caddy, is illustrated below. This procedure should work equally well for virtually any laptop CD/DVD/etc drive designed for any model of laptop.
We will be using the caddy from a CD drive for an IBM Thinkpad 600 series laptop to mount the new drive in. This drive will fit laptops including the Thinkpad 600, 600E and 600X. Again, essentially any CD drive that can be removed from a laptop can be used for its caddy in this way. In some cases the front plate (the part you see when the drive is installed) on the new drive may be too large for the new laptop, in which case some slight adjustment to the front plate may be required - see below. This drive is illustrated below.
The first step in the change-over is to remove all of the screws on the sides of the new drive as illustrated. Also remove the screws on the back of the drive. Leave the screws in the top of the drive mechanism - these are part of the mechanism, not the caddy.
Once all of the screws on the caddy have been removed you can remove the plastic components of the caddy on the new drive. These may involve some plastic clips keeping the caddy together - but the separation shouldn't require the use of force. The drive will also have a plug which connects the laptop to the standard connector on the back of the CD drive (in the example it is a green card with two black plugs on it) - this should also be removed.
Once the plastic parts have all been removed you will be left with a standard form drive with the original face-plate still on it shown.
The pictures below illustrate the standard "form-factor" (which is just techno-babble for "size and shape") of a laptop CD drive. This is what you should be left with once you have finished removing the caddy.
The next picture shows the standard connector which is in the same place on the back of all laptop CD drives. In order to determine whether it will be possible to swap your drive with a newer, faster or flashier drive you can be fairly safe if you remove the caddy and check that the form factor and connector of your existing drive match those illustrated.
The next step in the conversion is to remove the caddy from your existing CD drive. This is done in the same way as above - though additional care is needed as the caddy will be reused this time to mount your new drive. In the example drive the green connection board is integrated into the back panel of the drive as shown. Leave this there - the parts of the caddy will be reused as-is for your new drive.
Once all parts of the caddy on the caddy on your existing drive have been removed you should be left with a basic drive of the same size and shape as the new drive you are replacing it with.
In the example the two basic drives with the caddies removed are shown below.
The final step is to reassemble the caddy from your original drive on the new drive. You no longer need the original drive mechanism or the caddy that was on the new drive. Its probably best to hold on to these until you are sure that the new drive works as you expect in your laptop - but you can then dispose of them, put them in a box in the back of your wardrobe or try to sell them to subsidise the purchase of your new drive (presuming that they work, of course :-).
The caddy from your original drive should just screw onto the new drive and the interconnector card and its cover plug into the back of the laptop, as illustrated. The primary proviso here is that there may be a problem if the face-plate on the new drive and your old drive are different shapes which may prevent you mounting the caddy properly. If this is the case, you may need to cut down the face plate from your new drive to fit - see the explanation of this below.
Once you have connected the caddy completely to the new drive you should be left with the new drive mounted in a caddy appropriate for connection to your laptop.
If, as in the case of the example, the new drive and your old drive have similar face-plates, you will now be finished and all that remains to be done is to slip the new drive into your laptop and power it up. Windows (or Mac OS) should then detect the new hardware and may install some drivers - and voila, your laptop now has a new, cooler optical drive (or should have a functional drive - if that's all you were after...). At this point however it may also become clear that the face-plate on your new drive is larger than that on the original CD drive - in which case you may need to cut it down to fit (see the instructions below).
The most vexed question in changing over a laptop CD-drive can be finding or making a suitable face-plate (also called a bezel) for the new CD drive to fit into your laptop. In many cases - such as the case of the example given - the old and new face plates will be of a sufficiently similar size and shape that you can simply use the new plate in your laptop as it came for no loss of functionality. Again as illustrated in the example however this doesn't always mean that the new plate will be the best physical or colour match for your new laptop.
This doesn't have to be a problem - a CD-RW / DVD combo drive with a silver face plate for a Thinkpad 600 may well be a lot cheaper for the same functionality than the original IBM drive with a black face-plate. If the lack of colour match worries you, one option we have found to work fine is some carefully matched and applied paint. This is best done by removing the face-plate (as shown below) and painting the plate with a tiny brush.
Another alternative is to attempt to locate a face-plate for the drive designed for your laptop - or for a laptop more similar to yours. If your laptop's manufacturer has made a drive for your laptop using the same mechanism then it could be worthwhile to contact them and see if you can get the face-plate (again, also called a bezel) from them.
It is possible, of course, that the face plate on your old drive might be able to be moved to the new drive. In order to check out this option, there are a couple of things to check. Firstly you need to check that the controls on the fronts of the new and old drives are in the same place. Not all drives have an activity indicator light, but most have an eject hole (the small hole in the front of the drive) and an eject button (yep, that's the button, I suspect you knew that...). If these are in the same places on your old and new drives then you are in with a chance that the plates might be exchangeable - otherwise you'll have to go for one of the other options. The pictures below illustrate where the controls are on the original Thinkpad 600 drive used in the example.
The pictures below show where the controls are on the new drive that was being installed. As you can see, they are in a different arrangement and location on the drive, so in this case it was not possible to change over the drive.
The second photo below shows where the mounting points for the face-plate on the new drive are. This is the second step in determining if the face plate you have can be changed over - these have to match.
If you can't change over the face-plates on your drives, the face-plate on the new drive is the wrong shape for your laptop and you can't get a face-plate which will match, you will have to make "adjustments" to the plate on the new drive to suit your laptop. The best way to do this is to remove the face plate from the drive and take of thin slivers of plastic from it using a Stanley knife until it matches your laptop. In the case of the example it is possible that the face-plate on the new drive is slightly taller than the original, so in some applications it may have been necessary to slightly reduce this height. To do this remove the plate (see below) and carefully remove a thin-sliver of plastic.
The steps needed to remove the face plate vary from drive to drive. The first step is always to get the drive open. The easiest way to do this is by using a straightened paper-clip (or a pin, or the inside of a wire tie, ... you get the idea) to pop the drive open using the emergency eject hole on the front of the drive. Just push the wire in the hole, and the drive should pop open.
Once the drive is opened the next step is to remove the actual face plate. In the case of the new drive in the example there are three small screws that need to be removed (two on the top, one on the near side in the photo below). After this, there is a single clip (on the far underside of the drive, see the picture of the removed face-plate below) which disengages in removing the plate. Other drive may have more or less screws, and some drives have no screws at all and simply slot off by pushing the plate sideways. To determine how to remove your plate will need a careful inspection of the way the plate is attached to the drive and some care in removing it. Removing the plate should never require the use of a significant amount of force ... that sounds most like a way to break the face-plate and/or the drive.
The pictures below illustrate one face plate that had to be modified to fit into the caddy for the laptop it was going into. In this case the original face-plate was flat and square, while the Dell C-series caddy required a drive with curved top corners. This was achieved by removing the face plate and carefully whittling back the plastic on the corners until they matched the shape of the original drive - giving the results illustrated below.
That's all there is to it. I just need to finish off with the inevitable disclaimer. While the techniques illustrated have worked well in all of the change-overs I have done, I don't claim by any means to have tried every possibility, so it is for you to judge whether they will work in your case. Similarly, while they've worked for me, you do them at your own risk and I'm not liable if you stuff them up or they weren't appropriate in your case. If you are concerned that anything shown is too complicated for you, I'd advise looking for a drive that comes with mounting hardware for your laptop. While most laptop drives are inter-compatible, this doesn't mean that all drives will be. Some drives are slightly non standard and will work fine in many laptops, and not at all in others - but this is rare. Also, the fact that you can get a drive to fit into your laptop, doesn't mean that you will be able to use all of its features. In general, it is hard to use a CD burner in any laptop slower than a Pentium II, and you need around a PII-400 or faster to play DVDs acceptably. I'm not sure what you need to run a DVD burner - but I'd recommend at least a PIII or equivalent.
Having said all of that, always remember that if you are willing to pay the asking price for a drive, the chances are that someone else will be willing to as well. So if the drive doesn't work in your laptop you can almost always get most or all of your money back by reselling the drive on eBay or in any other way you'd like to try. So where's the risk? Give it a go...