It will probably work is the best answer I could give you.
The optical drive plugs into a SATA port same as a hard drive does. And in all cases, all the SATA ports on the motherboard operate at the same speed. All the HD caddy does is make the drive fit comfortably in the larger space that the optical drive needed.
The reason they specify the 17R model in the product description is because the plastic bezel on the face of the caddy matches that model's case. If the bezel doesn't match, it would still work fine, it just wouldn't look pretty.
However, one issue you may want to consider is EMI problems. Since an optical drive is a low-speed device, laptop manufacturers like to put things like bluetooth/wi-fi radios next to it because the interference those devices generate will not make a difference to the optical drive. This will vary depending on the laptop's internal design.
There is a very good chance this won't apply to you, but a famous example of this problem is with MacBook Pros. A drive in such a caddy works and the drive can be used, but data corruption happens frequently because the cable that connects the radio antennas to the logic board is unshielded and it passes right over the drive's SATA connector and causes interference.
