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EricHiggin said:

Can't get an optical drive slot hard drive caddy to work for my bro's laptop. He's got an account with HP but every time we try to post it's saying he doesn't have the privileges to access the community for some reason. Hoping this community can maybe help to whatever degree.

The laptop is an HP 17-ca1001ca (2020 low end model) with up to date Win 10 and up to date BIOS. It has 2 internal stock storage slots. An M.2 for either SATA or PCIe, as well as a 2.5" SATA. He's got an M.2 PCIe NVMe with his OS on it and a 2.5" HDD just for storage. The optical drive slot definitely works, as it did before and still does. The BIOS and Windows (disk management) see it fine and it works, but when the caddy is installed it doesn't see anything anywhere.
The new SSD definitely works, as I've checked with a USB adapter, and I've also tried an HDD I've got lying around and it's good but doesn't work in the caddy either. I've tried them both in the caddy uninitialized, initialized, and formatted, an nothing works. I also don't think it's a power problem because while the SSD specs say it uses up to 7.5w, the HDD only uses up to 3.5w so at the very least the HDD should work if the SSD needed too much power for that ODD SATA slot.
I've messed with the BIOS a bit but it's very basic and doesn't show much and doesn't allow for many changes. I tried what I could with it but no luck there either.

Now the caddy was supposed to have a selector switch, as the product pics show, but the caddy he received doesn't have any switches. I've looked it up and the switch can be in different places but this caddy doesn't have any switch anywhere. I also don't know if his laptop requires the switch or not, as it's not clear when its necessary or not, but seems as though you don't always need a switch either. We don't really have any way to test the caddy by itself to know if it's any good or not either.

Is there any chance the laptop just won't allow for a third storage drive? I'm not really clear exactly on how the caddy works in the ODD SATA slot, but it sounds like it basically tricks the BIOS into thinking there's an ODD still in there, which allows Windows to see and use the SSD in the caddy? If that's the case I don't see why any laptop wouldn't be able to use a caddy with an extra storage drive, but perhaps that's not the case?

Just not sure what to think. Right now I'm kinda assuming he either needs a caddy with the switch or this caddy itself is faulty. Anything I might be missing? Any other idea's?

Here's the caddy product link:
https://www.amazon.ca/SZYIKUER-9-5mm-Tray-DRIVES-12-7silver/dp/B075814NB2/ref=sr_1_1?crid=356JUB8P90S5W&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.wfgZQJFztiwHv3TrNcBfVLSkXXJrjHg5FPJ24M-tFGQIGhP78GH_58AWFoOGlGjBImlWWQSQ3HpYW8Mv4fpPJ9B2I0fcFtxbvRG164jMI9H-pKyaysVcny8d7ncLUWuN-kC70ECKEU8n8ZJaa26oSMZmHj27HPruGZHGd5CpbBWJ3XxZOqLjDFUwauhvId-rZP5rwmfk-6qeNDrcHwMNTrWegiYDzn4ZTKSKkBnTsTzQdxUpJmmXUAymKDtz7Rxfyj5kQVnebheeniwJiUNkFgq153v8SNN47ZQ31ONrVg4ttHwirLGi2fkL9LDjXiZPNyuVsSMX10RHCUNFakQXJ3HhKese-uYQsFW-rF66CZag_iBwytPNEuBMDUhjOfpF2Y7gRik915-yW2aeWT9sW2wRTBUYrl3ylvrTTkYY4jLJOjR8V11OSHwsr4BMh7O9.uaJRi2NLu_Po2hzBxKiT_iAFe58bd_Iy4UzB4NfDIAc&dib_tag=se&keywords=2nd%2Bhard%2Bdrive%2Bcaddy&qid=1736120609&sprefix=2nd%2Bhard%2Bdrive%2B%2Caps%2C290&sr=8-1&th=1

Could it be that you can only connect one device through the SATA, as in, either the 2.5 inch storage or the disc drive, without the switch?