laptop multi drive

[mvsfan]

I just got a multi drive for my old laptop. Its identical to the old one except it has an extra pin on the back of it thats causing it to not go into the bay fully.

Is there a reason for that, or could i just take that plastic off?

[HydrogLox]

The intent behind that pin should be pretty clear - so that you cannot attach that to your particular laptop model. Now without more information (different model numbers?) it is impossible to determine what motivates that intent.

One possibility is higher power requirements - your laptop's PSU/converter may not be able to supply the amperage to drive that unit - at best rendering the laptop's operation unstable, at worst killing some part of the internal power supply circuitry.

[Unseen]

Sometimes such a one-way-only-compatible "lock out" is used when the manufacturer adds a new feature to the interface that isn't available in the old one. In this particular case it could for example mean that the old interface version supported only PATA drives and the new one supports either PATA or SATA.

Also, it seems suspicious that the orange/brown flex PCB that is visible between the connector and the plastic casing appears to have a different number of traces in the two drives.