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Need advice for Optibay drive

G

guidoz

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 7, 2014
32
0
I own a MBP 13" mid-2012 2.9Ghz

long time ago I replaced the HDD with an SSD (currently a 256Gb Samsung 850 PRO ) placing the original 750Gb HDD in an optibay.
Now, the 750GB are almost completely filled up (I shoot a lot of raw pics, and I like to keep them all with me) , so I think I'm going to replace this HDD with a new one with 2TB.

Any advice?
I guess I can stick with SATA II drives, right? What if I mount a SATA III drive? Will it work anyway (even if not at SATA III speed I guess)? It might be a good idea to buy a sata3 anyway as with a quick search I've notices sata2 drives of that size are getting rare and cost as much as a sata3... what do you think?

Any suggestion about specific models?

Thanks
 
Last edited:
matreya

matreya

macrumors 65816
Nov 14, 2009
1,286
127
I'm pretty sure most SATA3 hard drives are backwards-compatible with SATA2. You can get up to 2TB in that form factor.
 
G

guidoz

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 7, 2014
32
0
Ok thanks. Just worried about possible issues since the channel was not intended to support this kind of drives.

So any drive would work? Any advice about a specific model?

Thanks
 
duervo

duervo

macrumors 68020
Feb 5, 2011
2,466
1,232
I have a 1TB Seagate SSHD in the OptiBay slot in my 15" mid-2012 MBP and it connects at 6Gb SATA3 just fine. Unless otherwise known, I'm fairly certain that the disk controller on the 13" and 15" are the same (just the layout of the logic board is obviously different.)

I suspect that you should be fine with a 2TB disk in there.

Then again, right now they do tend to be rather thick for a 2.5" drive. You may have difficulty finding one that will physically fit at the moment.

You'll need one that 9.5mm thick. So far, the 2TB ones I can find are 15mm. That's a huge difference.

Seagate 2TB Backup Slim portable drive might fit. You'd have to crack open its case and remove the bare drive though, voiding its warranty in the process. Part Number: STDR2000100

With its enclosure, it's 12.1mm thick. So, the drive will be thinner than that.

Or, you could just wait until Seagate or Western digital starts selling an internal 2TB slim laptop drive, if they haven't already.
 
Last edited:
G

guidoz

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 7, 2014
32
0
duervo said:
You'll need one that 9.5mm thick. So far, the 2TB ones I can find are 15mm. That's a huge difference.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I had just realised this problem...

i'll have a look around and see what i can find. In the worst case scenario i'll stick with current 750gb and keep old photos only on external drives.

thanks

edit:

Samsung apparently is the only one making them...

Spinpoint M9T Internal Drive


SATA interface
2.5-inch form factor
Thickness 9.5mm
5400 RPM spin speed

1,5-2tb

not superfast maybe, but it is mostly storage for music or raw files that need to be accessible but aren't the ones on which I'm working on (those are on the ssd)... so it should be ok

thanks!
 
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