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SATA2 in ODD bay on MB5,2

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DaKKs

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 15, 2012
474
43
Stockholm, Sweden
One of my computers just kicked the bucket and i was thinking of putting the ocz ssd in the odd bay of my macbook (mid-2009). Only it seems its only running at 1.5Gbps according to the profiler. Is the odd the bottleneck or is that bay incapable of SATA2 speeds?

Before anyone says just to put it in the main bay, there is already an identical ssd there. I'm aiming for raid. If nothing else, it would be a fun experiment.

Oh and this is the white, non-unibody model.
 
BrettApple

BrettApple

macrumors 65816
Apr 3, 2010
1,137
483
Heart of the midwest
I haven't confirmed this for the 2009 MacBook, but I think it uses a similar chipset to my Late 2008 model. And I believe, at least on mine, that in order to use SATA 2 in the optical bay, the drive has to be a SATA 2 drive.

And if it is a SATA 3 drive (sounds like this is the case), it reverts back to using SATA 1 for whatever reason. But only in the optical bay, it will still run at SATA 2 in the main bay as you have seen.

Just seems to be a firmware/hardware limitation. No way around it that I know of other than to have a SATA 2 drive there like I had to do.

Here's my layout if anyone cares. Both run at 3 gigabit.
jjIzm9Z.png


It probably won't be a huge deal as far as real world performance goes, but if it's in a RAID it may take a small hit.
 
D

DaKKs

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 15, 2012
474
43
Stockholm, Sweden
I've locked the ssd to sata 2 so it runs at 3.0gbps. Based on what you posted, if i do the same with the other drive it should work.

And yes, with ocz drives it must be done in the main bay also. Otherwise it defaults to sata s1. Silly nvidia.

EDIT: I have the exact same sata controller. Thank you. I'll just go now and throw another SSD in my macbook.
 
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