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late 2011 macbook pro and kingston v200 64gb ssd

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deymious

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 24, 2013
8
0
hey all,

First of all, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!

I have a late 2011 mbp 17 inch model that I upgraded to 16 gb of ram. Now I'm looking to upgrade the SSD. I have a kingston v200 64 gb ssd lying around and need advice from the pros on a few things. Basically, I want to just swap out the ssd for the optical drive and have it run mavericks OS and a couple of programs so that the time it (hopefully) makes the experience much faster and I don't have to wait 15 seconds for programs to open sometimes.

1) Will the 64 gb be enough for a mac os x mavericks install? How much will/should I have left over after the OS? Will I have enough room to dedicate to a couple of highly used applications? (SPSS, R, Matlab).

2) How would I get a fresh install of the OS? Would I simply just use carboncopy and clone my current OS install or do I need to make a new one?

3) I have bootcamp running windows 7 that I use from time to time. Can I just leave this running off of my regular HD since I don't use it that often?

Now to some more nitty gritty details.

4) I would be taking the optical drive out and placing the SSD drive in here. Where can I find the best and cheapest adapter to fit my ssd in the optical bay w/o any complications?

5) How much of an increase in speed can I expect since it's just a 64 gb SSD. Should I notice a real drastic difference in boot times and just using my mac in general?

6) How will it affect my battery life?

7) When I backup my mac, will it automatically backup the ssd as well or will I have to tell it to backup both the SSD and the regular HD?

Are there any true negatives to doing this? Would you guys recommend it in general?

Thanks a lot and I appreciate all the help!
 
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Doward

macrumors 6502a
Feb 21, 2013
526
8
Ok, general answers:

Yes, you can install the 64GB, more than enough for a Mavericks install. Enough for programs as well? That depends. The minimum for me ends up being ~250GB drive for my programs, OS, and spare space.

You can do a fresh install by booting off your current recovery partition, or by booting from a Mavericks USB key

Leave all VMs on the larger hard drive.

Backing up you will need to tell it to backup both volumes.

Merry Christmas, family time!
 
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deymious

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 24, 2013
8
0
Hello!

Thank you for the advice. I just want to add one or two more commonly used programs that I have to the SSD so I'm glad to hear that it will be doable. Is the v200 the right size to fit into the optical bay?

Merry Christmas!
 
NewishMacGuy

NewishMacGuy

macrumors 6502a
Aug 2, 2007
636
0
1. Be aware that the optibay on the 2011 UMPB-15 & 17 can only run SATA II reliably.

2. As such, you'll likely be better off just putting a hybrid in the main bay.

>
 
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deymious

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 24, 2013
8
0
So is it better to put the actual hard drive in the optibay and the ssd in the regular hd bay? does that have sata III?
 
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Doward

macrumors 6502a
Feb 21, 2013
526
8
I'm under the impression that BOTH bays in the LATE 2011 are SATA-III.

The early 2011's had the SATA-II opti-bay, but I am not 100% certain on that.
 
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deymious

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 24, 2013
8
0
is there any way to figure out whether its sata 2 or 3? if its 2, can i just put the regular hd in the optibay and the ssd in the hd bay?
 
D

Doward

macrumors 6502a
Feb 21, 2013
526
8
Unsure. You can install the drive in the Optibay, and then go under your 'System Report' and see if the negotiated speed is 6Gbps or not.

Otherwise, yes, you should be able to set it up as you have described.
 
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deymious

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 24, 2013
8
0
checked the link speed for both the disk drive and the optibay and it says 6 gigbabit so apparently I do have Sata 3. Thank you for the help.

I think the only thing left is where is the best/cheapest place to buy an optibay adapter for an ssd and also does installing an ssd negatively affect battery life or not really?
 
jorgk

jorgk

macrumors regular
Mar 20, 2013
111
43
SATA-3 (6GBPS) problem in MBP 2011

deymious said:
checked the link speed for both the disk drive and the optibay and it says 6 gigbabit so apparently I do have Sata 3. Thank you for the help.

I think the only thing left is where is the best/cheapest place to buy an optibay adapter for an ssd and also does installing an ssd negatively affect battery life or not really?
Click to expand...

Hm - might not be that simple. Check here. Read careful their statement #2.

AFAIR, some individual models would accept flawlessly the SATA-3 (6Gbps) connected SSD in an enclosure like 'optibay', but the number of people running into problems was high, so those models might be the minority.

See some links in this post at a Crucial forum where all I could find is linked together. BTW, I never heard of anyone going the 'manual' shielding resolution.

Good luck!
 
Last edited:
Baunkjaer

Baunkjaer

macrumors 6502
Feb 20, 2009
387
53
Copenhagen, Denmark
jorgk said:
Hm - might not be that simple. Check here. Read careful their statement #2.
Click to expand...
jorgk said:
AFAIR, some individual models would accept flawlessly the SATA-3 (6Gbps) connected SSD in an enclosure like 'optibay', but the number of people running into problems was high, so those models might be the minority.

See some links in this post at a Crucial forum where all I could find is linked together. BTW, I never heard of anyone going the 'manual' shielding resolution.

Good luck!
Click to expand...
That´s why I´ll go with SATA 300 SSD along with the datadubler.
 
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deymious

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 24, 2013
8
0
Hi all,

Thanks for all the advice! Do you think I would have a problem putting the ssd in the hard drive bay and putting the hard drive in the optibay? Because then I can get the sata 3 speeds (hopefully) for the ssd in the hd bay?

Thanks!
 
ecschwarz

ecschwarz

macrumors 65816
Jun 28, 2010
1,433
354
deymious said:
Hi all,

Thanks for all the advice! Do you think I would have a problem putting the ssd in the hard drive bay and putting the hard drive in the optibay? Because then I can get the sata 3 speeds (hopefully) for the ssd in the hd bay?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

This is what a lot of folks have done - you'd just need the appropriate bracket to mount it in the bay - you should get 6.0 Gbps from that bay. As others have said, the late 2011 models should also allow it from both bays, while the early 2011 models allow it on the hard drive bay, and 3.0 Gbps from the optical bay. Personally, I'd install the SSD in the hard drive bay just to give you some flexibility if you want to put different kinds of devices in the larger optical bay.
 
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deymious

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 24, 2013
8
0
kk thanks for the help I truly appreciate it. where is the best place to buy an ssd/hd adapter for the optibay?
 
NewishMacGuy

NewishMacGuy

macrumors 6502a
Aug 2, 2007
636
0
Doward said:
I'm under the impression that BOTH bays in the LATE 2011 are SATA-III.

The early 2011's had the SATA-II opti-bay, but I am not 100% certain on that.
Click to expand...

In all 2011 15" and 17" MBPs (Early and Late) both bays are technically SATA III, but due to an Intel chipset fault, the optibay won't run SATA III reliably. SATA II will work fine. There have been some workarounds for the 17"ers but I'm not sure how they hold up.

>
 
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deymious

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 24, 2013
8
0
thank you all for the help! i just need advice on where to get the optibay ssd holder from? thanks again!
 
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