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Why can't my late 2011 17" MBP use a SATA III SSD in the optical bay?

D

DelisleBA.info

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 12, 2011
38
0
Athens, OH
When I first got my late 2011 17" MBP it came with a 750GB 7200RPM drive that I quickly replaced with a 512GB SSD. I removed the optical drive and replaced it with the 750GB factory drive. Last week I bought a 1TB SSD drive and was going to replace the 750GB drive with it.

However it appears that the optical bay sata slot does not support sata iii even though it is listed as such. I keep getting disk needs initialized but when I try to format it I get the message. "Disk erase failed with the error: Wiping volume data to prevent future accidental probing failed."

Anybody got a solution?
Can I force my mac to only use SATA II mode on the optical bay?

Thanks in advance for the support.

SPECS:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro8,3
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2.5 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 16 GB
Boot ROM Version: MBP81.0047.B27
SMC Version (system): 1.70f6
OS: 10.9.2
 
glenthompson

glenthompson

macrumors demi-god
Apr 27, 2011
2,982
842
Virginia
Well known problem. While the optical bay can handle a sata III HDD, it won't work with a SSD. No way to degrade the interface to sata II. Only option is to buy a sata II SSD, available from OWC, and install it. If you're just looking for disk space you could move the 1 TB drive to the main bay and keep your original drive in the optical.
 
jorgk

jorgk

macrumors regular
Mar 20, 2013
111
43
DelisleBA.info said:
… . However it appears that the optical bay sata slot does not support sata iii even though it is listed as such. I keep getting disk needs initialized but when I try to format it I get the message. "Disk erase failed with the error: Wiping volume data to prevent future accidental probing failed."

Anybody got a solution?
Click to expand...

See here:
jorgk said:
I believe the 'other' optibay/MCE-bay/data-doubler that is claimed to work as SATA3 in the 2011-MBPs (15 and 17") is this from hardwork. The story is that there is some shielding required, and DIY solutions have been posted here and here. I have never heard of someone else having tried and achieved the same, though (but still looking, as I have a late-2011 MBP 15" myself - and consider a RAID0 with 2 SSDs as an option if it becomes too slow in its future).

Good luck!
Click to expand...
 
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