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Two hard drive configuration on MacBook Pro

J

james1607

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 7, 2014
2
0
Hi everyone,

So I'm planning on upgrading my early 2011 Macbook Pro 15 by adding an SSD at the expense of the optical drive. Basically, what I would like to do is to replace the current HDD with the new SSD and replace the optical drive with the HDD mounted onto an optical caddy.

In summary:

SSD (main HDD bay) - Mac OS Mavericks and Windows 7 + a few Mac/Windows applications
HDD (optical bay) - Mac OS and Windows data files and programs

This is possible? If so, how would I go about doing this?

Cheers!
 
I did this on my 2010 MBP. 500gb in optibay and 240gb in HHD slot. It works great.

You Tube has lots of videos on how to do it.
 
james1607 said:
Hi everyone,

So I'm planning on upgrading my early 2011 Macbook Pro 15 by adding an SSD at the expense of the optical drive. Basically, what I would like to do is to replace the current HDD with the new SSD and replace the optical drive with the HDD mounted onto an optical caddy.

In summary:

SSD (main HDD bay) - Mac OS Mavericks and Windows 7 + a few Mac/Windows applications
HDD (optical bay) - Mac OS and Windows data files and programs

This is possible? If so, how would I go about doing this?

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I'd just sell the entire machine off, because the early/late-2011 machines all have a manufacturing flaw which causes it to succumb to Radeongate.
 
I've gone through countless web pages on guides, but unfortunately, none of them have covered my desired configuration.

My main concern is configuring the second hard drive which would be used as data storage for both operating systems running on the SSD. The easiest route would be to format the HDD to FAT32, but then that comes with limited file size. Ideally, I'd want the second HDD to be readable from both OSX and Windows 7 without the limited file size storage...
 
james1607 said:
Hi everyone,

So I'm planning on upgrading my early 2011 Macbook Pro 15 by adding an SSD at the expense of the optical drive. Basically, what I would like to do is to replace the current HDD with the new SSD and replace the optical drive with the HDD mounted onto an optical caddy.

In summary:

SSD (main HDD bay) - Mac OS Mavericks and Windows 7 + a few Mac/Windows applications
HDD (optical bay) - Mac OS and Windows data files and programs

This is possible? If so, how would I go about doing this?

Cheers!
Click to expand...

I confirm this setup works great. I have a SSD and the stock 750 GB HDD in place of the DVD and it's been working perfectly for more than 2 years. As for the Radeon-gate I've been lucky I guess, because I've had no problems. I'd recently took my MBP to an Authorised Apple Service Provider to clean it of dust, reapply the pastes and so on and they've concluded everything's fine, but I do have it in the back of my mind though. I just hope Apple finally acknowledges it and will provide a free fix of some sorts. They did it with a white Macbook's breaking case, so there's hope (my white MB was 5 years old when they've replaced the casing).
 
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