What type of drive for laptop optical drive caddy

jab8283 · January 16, 2018

I have a HP Notebook which I recently converted from 2.5" HDD to SSD. Nice!!! Fast!!! 1-TB SSD was a major improvement however I just learned of the hard drive caddy adapter that replaces the rarely used optical drive with a second HDD or SSD and there lies the issue. My thought is if one SSD is good, a second SSD for non-essential folders (Music, Photos, Videos) would be better and keep notebook PC operating lightening speed. The problem, which type of 2.5" 7mm drive is actually better when used in a caddy adapter in optical drive port? I heard somewhere that an HDD is better as the optical drive is slower which I don't understand as it is fed by a SATA cable just as the main computer drive is operated with. Is there any benefit of HDD or SSD when used as second drive via optical port with a drive caddy adapter?

My HP Notebook originally was built with a Seagate 2.5" 7mm 512GB HDD which I just upgraded to a WD 2.5" 7mm 1-TB SSD which made a world of difference. However by the time I synced my Home PC files and folders to the Notebook, I'm already back down to less than 500GB on the new SSD. So I want to use the hard drive caddy adapter with a second drive and move bulky folders to second drive and dedicate primary drive to Notebook for high performance yet maintain all the files and folders from my Home PC in my Notebook while on the road. I need access to the same files and folders whether I am at home or on-the-road for days at a time. I just need to know for a Notebook in mobile use, would it be better to use a HDD 1-TB as the second drive or can I use and benefit from a second SSD 1-TB (or higher) drive? What is this craziness about the optical drive port operating at slower speed?

In addition to upgrading Notebook from HDD to SSD, I also upgraded RAM from 6GB to max 12GB which I feel really benefited the Notebook as it now rivals the speed of my Home PC. Now I have the Notebook I've always dreamed of.