SSD+HDD Installation question

[seveej]

Originally Posted by Mike Boreham

Thanks, my strong understanding is that putting the removed superdrive in a housing doesn't get round this problem, because it still has to connect by USB. When the superdrive is internal it is connected to the SATA bus.

Well, my comment was intended to be a general recommendation to the OP, not a comment intended to disqualify Mike's problem.

EDIT: Mike, have you tried WinToFlash

RGDS,

[Mike Boreham]

Originally Posted by seveej

Well, my comment was intended to be a general recommendation to the OP, not a comment intended to disqualify Mike's problem.

RGDS,

Yes, apologies, I see now you were replying to the OP not to me, but unfortunately his situation is very similar to mine (2010 MBP, removed optical drive), so I don't think it will help him. However I could be wrong!

I have researched installing from Windows without an internal optical drive on and off for some years (but less in the past year since switching to Parallels). The forums are full of people asking how to do it, because they have tried and failed, other people replying with easy solutions, and some people replying with more complex solutions involving rEFIt and similar.

The only explanation I have is that the "easy" solutions only work for more recent macs. The complex (rEFIt) solutions do work, but have potential for messing up the whole machine because it affects booting the mac side as well.

I think it can be done by installing Windows on the SSD/HDD before removing the optical drive, but then you can't do things like repair installs from the Windows install disk, which maybe isn't too important.

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Originally Posted by seveej

EDIT: Mike, have you tried WinToFlash

RGDS,

I have heard of it but not tried it. My understanding is that it is really aimed at Windows users, and the makers make no claim for macs for it, and say they have never tested it with macs.

I think it will meet the same basic problem that some macs do, and some macs don't boot USB sticks. I think macs which had superdrives originally will not boot USB sticks.

Love to be proved wrong about this.

[hfg]

I have on 2 occasions had to re-install my optical drive back into my MacBook Pro in order to install Windows on the main drive (SSD - I moved the original hard drive to the optical bay). This is the only way I could get it to work, even after reading many threads devoted to this subject.


However, I seem to recall a single post (which I can't find now) where they pointed out that there was a plist table in the library folder which contained a table of Mac computers which did not come with an internal optical drive, and thus implied that those Mac computers would be able to install Windows from an external optical drive. It then went on to discuss how to add your modified MacBook Pro to that table.

Does anyone else recall that post ... and remember where it was?

Or am I just getting senile?

[Mike Boreham]

Originally Posted by KnickFan

thanks guys but my professors told us we can't run our course programs on parallels. Still looking for a way to get windows and the mac os on the ssd before I put it in the optical drive.

Is your course a computing course? where the limitations of Parallels might conceivably be a factor.

Note that Bootcamp also has limitations compared to an actual Windows machine (all IDE mode no AHCI mode, EFI instead of BIOS).

Many people not close to the subject confuse virtualisation with emulation. Parallels and VMware use virtualisation. The old Connectix program "Virtual PC" used emulation which was an absolute dog and almost unusably slow. I would suggest your professors possibly think that running windows in Parallels is by emulation.

To put some numbers to this, my 2011 MacBook Pro has a Geekbench score of 11,400 running OSX 10.8.2. Windows 7, 64 bit running on 4xcpus with 4Gb RAM in Parallels 8 achieves 10,867. This is a lot faster than most run-of-the-mill windows machines.

Many Windows professional computer people use virtual machines all the time now (nothing to do with macs) because of the ease of deploying and testing, recreating, duplicating, starting again.

Maybe this gives you a bit of background to have a more meaningful discussion with your professors.

Parallels is not without it's problems, but my experience is that it is more problem free than Bootcamp.

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Originally Posted by hfg

I have on 2 occasions had to re-install my optical drive back into my MacBook Pro in order to install Windows on the main drive (SSD - I moved the original hard drive to the optical bay). This is the only way I could get it to work, even after reading many threads devoted to this subject.


However, I seem to recall a single post (which I can't find now) where they pointed out that there was a plist table in the library folder which contained a table of Mac computers which did not come with an internal optical drive, and thus implied that those Mac computers would be able to install Windows from an external optical drive. It then went on to discuss how to add your modified MacBook Pro to that table.

Does anyone else recall that post ... and remember where it was?

Or am I just getting senile?

I have seen that as well. I guess I am a bit sceptical, thinking that if that really was a solution it would have established itself as such...with so many people wanting it. I will have another look for it.

I have now reinstalled my optical drive three times...to update the firmware on the SSD. That is another big problem with Data Doublers/Optibays, but let's not go there on this thread. Just to say I can now do it very quickly!, no need to put all the screws back to make the superdrive usable.

EDIT. This looks like it might be the thread you ere looking for?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread...rt=15&tstart=0

[hfg]

Originally Posted by Mike Boreham

[/COLOR]

I have seen that as well. I guess I am a bit sceptical, thinking that if that really was a solution it would have established itself as such...with so many people wanting it. I will have another look for it.

I have now reinstalled my optical drive three times...to update the firmware on the SSD. That is another big problem with Data Doublers/Optibays, but let's not go there on this thread. Just to say I can now do it very quickly!, no need to put all the screws back to make the superdrive usable.

EDIT. This looks like it might be the thread you ere looking for?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread...rt=15&tstart=0

Thanks for that link!

It is not the one I was thinking of, but it is interesting in itself. That deals with adding the missing "radio button" to the Boot Camp Assistant dialog box to create the Windows installation disk. I wish Apple would return to the 4-button selection page in Boot Camp Assistant where you could separate the "partition" and "install" processes like they used to have.

I already have the retail Windows 8 disk and several licenses, and have used it to install Windows using the external SuperDrive to my new iMac and a Mac Mini, both of which did not come with internal optical drives. No problems there, and on the Mini I did not have to remove the "additional disk" to install.

Yeah ... SSD upgrades are a problem as well as they create a bootable CD for the upgrade environment. I simply removed the Macbook Pro SSD and temporarily stuck it in my Mac Pro to do the firmware update, then moved it back to the MBPro. That won't work for Windows installation, unfortunately.

-howard

[KnickFan]

Well, I bought a sata-usb connector today for the ssd. So I will just attempt to install everything while the optical drive is still in place and the ssd connected through usb.

[Mike Boreham]

Originally Posted by KnickFan

Well, I bought a sata-usb connector today for the ssd. So I will just attempt to install everything while the optical drive is still in place and the ssd connected through usb.

Well Good Luck and hope I am wrong, but I don't think it will work. The SSD will need to be internal.

Guess you still don't feel able to re-ask you Profs about Parallels with the info I posted?

[Mike Boreham]

Originally Posted by Mike Boreham

Well Good Luck and hope I am wrong, but I don't think it will work. The SSD will need to be internal.

Thinking some more about your case, because it is exactly where I was a year ago with my 2010 MBP I would do the following.

First I would decide to end up with SSD in the HDD bay and the existing HDD in the Optical bay. I know you like the idea of the SMS protection for the HDD by having it in the main bay, but frankly I wouldn't do it that way round. There are other threads where folks have had problems with with the OSX in the optical bay. If you are really determined you could follow the steps below and swop them over at the end, as an optional step 9. Some HDDs have there own shock protection internal to the disk so still protected in the optical bay. This person at least believes SMS protection still works in the optical bay anyway.

The outline steps I would follow are:
1. Put new unused SSD into the HDD bay (leave optical in place)
2. Connect HDD with your OSX on to the USB-eSATA adapter
3. Boot OSX from the HDD connected to the USB eSATA adapter. Being USB it will take a long time to boot and be slow to use.
4. Format the SSD (HFS+ and GUID, very important).
5. Clone your OSX to the SSD with CCC or Superduper.
6. Boot from OSX on the SSD. Make sure all working and good.
7. Using BCA, install Bootcamp and Windows onto the now internal SSD using a Windows install DVD in the internal optical drive. (Use Imgburn free to make DVD if you only have ISO at the moment.
8. Fit the HDD into the Optical bay when confident Windows working fine,

You can use an external optical drive or USB sticks to install Windows software

[KnickFan]

Originally Posted by Mike Boreham

Well Good Luck and hope I am wrong, but I don't think it will work. The SSD will need to be internal.

Guess you still don't feel able to re-ask you Profs about Parallels with the info I posted?

They were pretty much adamant about bootcamp only. So I'm guessing, or at least hoping lol that they actually tried and everything. Either way, I'm not down for doing otherwise since this is stuff i'm actually being graded on.

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Originally Posted by Mike Boreham

Thinking some more about your case, because it is exactly where I was a year ago with my 2010 MBP I would do the following.

First I would decide to end up with SSD in the HDD bay and the existing HDD in the Optical bay. I know you like the idea of the SMS protection for the HDD by having it in the main bay, but frankly I wouldn't do it that way round. There are other threads where folks have had problems with with the OSX in the optical bay. If you are really determined you could follow the steps below and swop them over at the end, as an optional step 9. Some HDDs have there own shock protection internal to the disk so still protected in the optical bay. This person at least believes SMS protection still works in the optical bay anyway.

The outline steps I would follow are:
1. Put new unused SSD into the HDD bay (leave optical in place)
2. Connect HDD with your OSX on to the USB-eSATA adapter
3. Boot OSX from the HDD connected to the USB eSATA adapter. Being USB it will take a long time to boot and be slow to use.
4. Format the SSD (HFS+ and GUID, very important).
5. Clone your OSX to the SSD with CCC or Superduper.
6. Boot from OSX on the SSD. Make sure all working and good.
7. Using BCA, install Bootcamp and Windows onto the now internal SSD using a Windows install DVD in the internal optical drive. (Use Imgburn free to make DVD if you only have ISO at the moment.
8. Fit the HDD into the Optical bay when confident Windows working fine,

You can use an external optical drive or USB sticks to install Windows software

What is the bolded?
re: underlined. I want to do a clean install. That is still possible with this method right?
I think I will in fact try this then swap em out at the end. Thanks.

[Mike Boreham]

Originally Posted by KnickFan

They were pretty much adamant about bootcamp only. So I'm guessing, or at least hoping lol that they actually tried and everything. Either way, I'm not down for doing otherwise since this is stuff i'm actually being graded on.

OK understand but as I said unless it is an actual computing course I'll bet they're wrong. Bootcamp is different too.
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What is the bolded?
re: underlined. I want to do a clean install. That is still possible with this method right?
I think I will in fact try this then swap em out at the end. Thanks.

When you are booted from your original, you need to format the new SSD. You could either do this after putting it in the MBP, or with the SSD connected via the eSATA bridge before you remove the HDD.

In Disk Utility select the Partition tab, then chose "one" partition, then click the options tab, select GUID from the options. Make sure Mac OS Extended (journalled) is selected too. See screenshot attached.

Yes. you can do clean install instead of clone (see you said the in first post).

Actually you could do the clean install of OSX with the SSD still connected by the eSATA bridge. It will be slower but you can see that it works before putting it in the machine. You will need to put it in the machine before the Bootcamp stage.

[Mike Boreham]

Originally Posted by Mike Boreham

In Disk Utility select the Partition tab, then chose "one" partition, then click the options tab, select GUID from the options. Make sure Mac OS Extended (journalled) is selected too. See screenshot attached.

Here are some better screenshots

[KnickFan]

Thanks a lot Mike. I will update either tonight or tomorrow night with my results

[KnickFan]

So last night I was able to do a clean install of ML on the SSD through the eSATA with no problems.
I shut down my mbp after everything was complete, disconnected the eSATA. Now my mbp is moving incredibly slow. Its taking 10minutes just to type this update.
Tonight I will backup my hdd, clean it up then put the SSD where the HDD is and try to install windows. I'm even considering just moving my essential files to my external hdd and then wiping my internal hdd completely clean. And hopefully after that all will be well and I can put my hdd in the optical bay.

[hfg]

Originally Posted by KnickFan

So last night I was able to do a clean install of ML on the SSD through the eSATA with no problems.
I shut down my mbp after everything was complete, disconnected the eSATA. Now my mbp is moving incredibly slow. Its taking 10minutes just to type this update.
Tonight I will backup my hdd, clean it up then put the SSD where the HDD is and try to install windows. I'm even considering just moving my essential files to my external hdd and then wiping my internal hdd completely clean. And hopefully after that all will be well and I can put my hdd in the optical bay.

If you just open up the MBP and swap the drives so that the SSD is in the original HD bay, I think you will see much better performance (remember to reset the "startup drive" in your System Preferences).

Many posts about poor data transfer from high speed SSDs in the optical bay most likely caused by noise in the cable/interface causing multiple r/w retries to get a good data transfer. Putting the much slower hard disk in that location seems to solve their problems ... hope it will solve yours as well.


-howard

[Mike Boreham]

Originally Posted by KnickFan

So last night I was able to do a clean install of ML on the SSD through the eSATA with no problems.
I shut down my mbp after everything was complete, disconnected the eSATA. Now my mbp is moving incredibly slow. Its taking 10minutes just to type this update.

If it was working well before you started it is very difficult to understand why connecting the SSD via USB, installing OSX on the SSD, then disconnecting the SSD, would make the internal HDD run much more slowly than before you started. In your shoes I would want to sort that before proceeding.

[KnickFan]

So...final update:

I installed my ssd where the hdd was and then installed Windows 7 via bootcamp. After everything was successful with Windows, I went ahead and put my hdd back in its original position and installed the ssd via OWC data doubler in the optical drive slot. So far, all is well!
Thanks to all of those who helped me out in this thread!

[Mike Boreham]

Originally Posted by KnickFan

So...final update:

I installed my ssd where the hdd was and then installed Windows 7 via bootcamp. After everything was successful with Windows, I went ahead and put my hdd back in its original position and installed the ssd via OWC data doubler in the optical drive slot. So far, all is well!
Thanks to all of those who helped me out in this thread!

Very pleased to hear this!

[KnickFan]

So I just have one last question:
Everything has been running smooth so far. My only issue is that when I try to set my browser preferences so that downloads go to my downloads folder on my original mac hdd it won't let me do it, only on the windows side. Is it just impossible to save my data to my mac hdd from windows or did I miss a step? Thanks in advance.

[Mike Boreham]

Originally Posted by KnickFan

So I just have one last question:
Everything has been running smooth so far. My only issue is that when I try to set my browser preferences so that downloads go to my downloads folder on my original mac hdd it won't let me do it, only on the windows side. Is it just impossible to save my data to my mac hdd from windows or did I miss a step? Thanks in advance.

I am sure that should be possible. For comparison the screenshot attached shows a get info window on a volume on an HDD in my MBP....Quickbench can't test it because it doesn't have permissions to write to it. Sounds like your Downloads folder.

The solution is probably this or similar:
1. Click the padlock on the get info window
2. Enter password
3. Click the "+" sign at bottom of get info window
4. Select yourself from the list which pops up. You should appear in the main list in the Get Info window, as Read only
5. Change Read only to Read and Write
6. Click the padlock to lock it.

This works for my similar situation. There may be other or better ways.
You could do it to the Downloads folder rather than whole HD. In probably better to do this. My Quickbench example is probably different.

[KnickFan]

Originally Posted by Mike Boreham

I am sure that should be possible. For comparison the screenshot attached shows a get info window on a volume on an HDD in my MBP....Quickbench can't test it because it doesn't have permissions to write to it. Sounds like your Downloads folder.

The solution is probably this or similar:
1. Click the padlock on the get info window
2. Enter password
3. Click the "+" sign at bottom of get info window
4. Select yourself from the list which pops up. You should appear in the main list in the Get Info window, as Read only
5. Change Read only to Read and Write
6. Click the padlock to lock it.

This works for my similar situation. There may be other or better ways.
You could do it to the Downloads folder rather than whole HD. In probably better to do this. My Quickbench example is probably different.

Thanks Mike but this didn't work. Browsers in Windows still won't let me set that folder to the default download folder

[Mike Boreham]

Originally Posted by KnickFan

Thanks Mike but this didn't work. Browsers in Windows still won't let me set that folder to the default download folder

This is now a Windows Bootcamp question...I would post a new thread in the Windows on Mac forum

[Mike Boreham]

Originally Posted by KnickFan

Thanks Mike but this didn't work. Browsers in Windows still won't let me set that folder to the default download folder

Just remembered the proper answer to this problem!

Windows can't write a Mac formatted volume, (and Macs can't write to an NTFS formatted volume)

To get Windows to write to the Downloads folder on your Mac partition you will need to install a prog like MacDrive or HFS+ for Windows on the Windows volume.

Similarly if you want the Mac to be able to write to the Windows volume you will need to install NTFS for Mac or similar on your Mac volume

Macs can read from NTFS but not write to it by default.

More joys of Bootcamp vs Parallels! Parallels has none of these issues.

When I was using Bootcamp regularly I used NTFS for Mac and MacDrive. I had some issues with HFS+ for Windows back then, but they are probably fixed now. HFS+ for Windows is more seamless than MacDrive and I would be inclined to try that.

Sorry I completely forgot all this in my earlier reply.