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Put 2nd hard drive in optical slot, but OS isn't recognizing it

T

tmilless

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 11, 2009
26
0
Hello, I put a small solid state HD in the standard slot to boot from and moved my 250 gig HD to the optical slot and used a "caddy" to put it in that place. I am up and running on the SSD, but I don't see a way to use the standard HD thats in the Optical slot. It seemed very easy to re-locate it, I got the little connecter to snap in good on the logic board or whatever that is.

Is there anything I need to do to be able to enable the 2nd HD? Or did I get a bunk "caddy"

Thanks
 
Its the 2008 NON uniboby 2.5 GHZ. I put a sort of generic one I bought off of amazon. I don't see a brand. but it was for a pre unibody macbook pro. Its grey plastic and has black on each side of the slot where you put the HD.
 
tmilless said:
Its the 2008 NON uniboby 2.5 GHZ. I put a sort of generic one I bought off of amazon. I don't see a brand. but it was for a pre unibody macbook pro. Its grey plastic and has black on each side of the slot where you put the HD.
Click to expand...

Thus it was a P-ATA to S-ATA Optibay. Again, is the HDD recognised in Disk Utility?
 
Im 99% sure its Pata to Sata, as thats the reason I put the SSD in the standard slot. And I made sure it said pre unibody.

No, the standard HD isn't recognized in disk utility.

Would I be better off just ordering a standard Optibay? I'm assuming that would be a little higher quality and I'd get an enclosure for my DVD drive?

I'm floored at how fast this thing boots now with the SSD. Cant believe I didn't do this a year ago when I first heard about them!
 
Last edited:
tmilless said:
Im 99% sure its Pata to Sata, as thats the reason I put the SSD in the standard slot. And I made sure it said pre unibody.

No, the standard HD isn't recognized in disk utility.

Would I be better off just ordering a standard Optibay? I'm assuming that would be a little higher quality and I'd get an enclosure for my DVD drive?

I'm floored at how fast this thing boots now with the SSD. Cant believe I didn't do this a year ago when I first heard about them!
Click to expand...

Since this is a cheap Optibay adapter, you might have gotten a broken one.
I got mine from here, though I have a UMBP, thus I have the S-ATA to S-ATA Optibay and put the SSD in there.
You also get an enclosure.
If you are US bound, you can try MCE-Tech.

Or you can scout eBay for another Optibay adapter.
 
Well its kind of funny, I actually got 2 of the exact same enclosure via eBay, I put a bid in on one for like 9 bucks that had a buy it now of 18 or something, forgot about it and the next day I did a buy it now on one that was about 14 or 15. Ended up winning both obviously so now I have 2. I was thinking about picking up another MBP pre unibody and doing this trick to it and selling it again.

Maybe I'll try the other one I bought, but I like the price of the one you bought. Is it high quality? Does the superdrive enclosure work good?

So when I open up disk utility it should recognize it right away right? Do I need to do anything to the HD (wipe it then re-install my data) or anything? Or can I simply put it in that slot with the OS installed on it?
 
tmilless said:
So when I open up disk utility it should recognize it right away right? Do I need to do anything to the HD (wipe it then re-install my data) or anything? Or can I simply put it in that slot with the OS installed on it?
Click to expand...

The HDD should be recognised, no need to format it.
When I did the Optibay transplant, it worked right after the first boot.
 
Thanks for all the help. I'm going to go ahead and call it a bad adapter. Sucks that its such a pain to swap it out (not the end of the world, but a half hour I don't want to spend messing around with it).

I guess thats what I get for spending 12 dollars. Lesson learned.

Otherwise its really simple to use the 2 hard drive system? Just keep everything data wise on the 2nd? It doesn't make it any more of a hassle?
 
tmilless said:
Otherwise its really simple to use the 2 hard drive system? Just keep everything data wise on the 2nd? It doesn't make it any more of a hassle?
Click to expand...

It really doesn't.
I have a 120 GB SSD as my system drive with my user folder on it.
Then I have a 125 GB partition on the 500 GB HDD (Momentus 7200.4) to clone my SSD to on a daily basis via CarbonCopyCloner, thus I have a backup in case the SSD doesn't boot.
Then I have another 15 GB partition with the Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installer on it.
And the remaining 360 GB are used for data storage as another partition.
 
Yup, it was the caddy. I put my other one in and it works great.

Another question. HOw do I do my time machine backups now?? Will it back up both Hard drives?
 
Ok, so when I do a backup will it back them both up? Or do I need to specify which one?

Also, if anyone knows what kind of DVD drive enclosure I need that would be great. They all say S-ATA for macbook pros. But don't I need a P-ATA?
 
tmilless said:
Ok, so when I do a backup will it back them both up? Or do I need to specify which one?
Click to expand...
Go into System Preferences > Time Machine > Options to see, if any drive or folder is excluded. If you don't want anything excluded, remove it from there, thus everything gets backed up. Just make sure, that every medium you want to backup and the medium you want to backup to is connected to get the full picture.
Time Machine FAQ


Also, if anyone knows what kind of DVD drive enclosure I need that would be great. They all say S-ATA for macbook pros. But don't I need a P-ATA?
Click to expand...
You need a P-ATA enclosure.
 
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