MBP - Second hard drive

Shadowness · 5 Jan 2011 at 15:34

Has anyone added a second hard drive in the optical bay in their MBP?

I did do a search, but couldnt find much about it.

I understand this voids the warranty, but surely if you send the MBP back you can just swap the drive back in like it was originally?

I ask because I have installed an SSD as my primary, so I have a 7200rpm 500GB drive collecting dust, and as I rarely use the optical drive I thought this would be a no brainer.

Any thoughts welcomed, especially from those who've done it

MacRS4 · 5 Jan 2011 at 16:10

I do - see here: http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2009/9/1_Second_Hard_Disk_into_a_Macbook_Pro_Unibody.html

What do you want to know? Works brilliantly. I have a 240Gb OCZ vertex2E and a 1Tb SATA drive in mine.

MacRS4 · 5 Jan 2011 at 16:10

By the way, put the 500Gb in the proper place, and the SSD in the optibay.

Shadowness · 5 Jan 2011 at 16:15

^Why? I've read that this causes problems when coming out of sleep as the optibay slot isnt the primary drive.

How did you do yours Mac? The MCE Optibay?

EDIT: Just looked at the blog.

iMacMart · 5 Jan 2011 at 17:52

I'd love to do this but I burn a fair amount of media and it would be a real pain

MacRS4 · 5 Jan 2011 at 18:52

Never had any issue with sleep at all and I've been through many SSDs including quite a few early editions.

The problem with putting the spinny drive in the OptiBay is you can feel it on the keyboard? Well I could anyway - try it.

Also, it meant the right side of the keyboard got quite hot.

I rarely use optical media and certainly not when mobile... I have a DVD drive parked under my monitor for that.

Al Vallario · 6 Jan 2011 at 11:22

Shadowness said:
I understand this voids the warranty, but surely if you send the MBP back you can just swap the drive back in like it was originally?

I ask because I have installed an SSD as my primary, so I have a 7200rpm 500GB drive collecting dust, and as I rarely use the optical drive I thought this would be a no brainer.

Added a second hard drive to my 13" unibody MacBook Pro using one of the fenvi adapters (Chinese clone of the OptiBay without the absurd $99 price tag; can be had for £11 shipped).

Installation is straightforward, albeit a little fiddly. Have to disconnect a few cables, but they're easy to replace. You don't have to break any seals or make any permanent modifications, so even if installation was deemed a violation of the warranty you could replace the original optical disk and Apple would be none the wiser.

Using the following combination of drives:

Hard disk bay: 500GB Seagate Momentus XT (7200rpm, SSD Hybrid) (ST95005620AS)
Optical disk bay: 500GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue (5400rpm) (WD5000BEVT)

All good so far. Despite having two conventional magnetic disks, noise isn't really an issue (the extra drive will be used mainly for storage, won't be spinning most of the time), nor is added heat. Battery time doesn't appear to have reduced significantly either.

Most importantly, perhaps, I don't miss my optical drive one bit!

Shadowness · 6 Jan 2011 at 11:32

I've not long ordered a 'caddy' off ebay. £13......so we'll see how that goes!

I intend to have my SSD for OS X, and then use the HDD for windows 7, as well as a large partition for storage.

Hades · 6 Jan 2011 at 14:02

This is a great idea. I didn't know you could do it to the MBP. Thinking about it, I don't think I've ever used my optical drive. Is it a special caddy that's needed?

Shadowness · 6 Jan 2011 at 14:21

Yeh, I think the expensive one is from MCE, called the 'Optibay' (google it)

But I just searched on ebay for 'macbook caddy' and got a few results, so I bought one

Marky · 8 Jan 2011 at 00:16

Sorry to take over the thread quickly... but one of the main negative points for me about getting a Macbook is the hard drive space...

Are you saying it would be possible to have a SSD for the OS and other important programs etc. and you could then fit a 2TB hard drive as well?

Is this a difficult thing to do?

Shadowness · 8 Jan 2011 at 08:36

^yes. That's the idea.

I'll let you know how easy it was when my caddy arrives. But looking at some guides and vids on youtube, it doesnt look that hard.

Al Vallario · 8 Jan 2011 at 20:29

Marky said:
Sorry to take over the thread quickly... but one of the main negative points for me about getting a Macbook is the hard drive space...

Are you saying it would be possible to have a SSD for the OS and other important programs etc. and you could then fit a 2TB hard drive as well?

Is this a difficult thing to do?

Yes, it seems most people going for this solution are using a combination of an SSD and a conventional hard drive. In my case I'm using two conventional magnetic drives, although one is an SSD hybrid

Do bear in mind we're dealing with 2.5" hard drives here, not the 3.5" desktop variety. The largest capacity 2.5" drives available at the moment are 1TB.

If I'm not mistaken, all the current 1TB hard drives are also 12mm in height (instead of the conventional 9mm), meaning they won't fit in the MacBook's dedicated hard drive bay. I've heard reports that 12mm height drives are fine in the OptiBay-style adapters, however

Marky · 10 Jan 2011 at 16:55

Al Vallario said:
Do bear in mind we're dealing with 2.5" hard drives here, not the 3.5" desktop variety. The largest capacity 2.5" drives available at the moment are 1TB.

Ahhh I forgot about that

That is a shame

Phrozenpenguin · 10 Jan 2011 at 17:25

If you a running an SSD as main boot drive (and I guess home directory), and second mechanical HD in the optibay, is it possible to spin down the mechanical drive when you are not using it? Particularly to save noise and heat.
I guess this is only really answered by those that have the setup installed.

The other reason for installing the mechanical drive in the "proper" place and the SSD in the optibay is it means that the (inbuilt macbook) shock protection for the hard drive will work properly.