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Installing SSD in optibay

M

macaaronb

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 8, 2009
15
0
Ok so I have bought my SSD and my optibay and am now trying to plan out how I am going to set it up.

Right now I am on Snow Leopard and don't want to upgrade to Lion because there are some PowerPC applications that I depend on. The ssd is 120 GB and I plan to have my system drive on there, with everything except the user folder--that goes on my 160 GB stock hard drive that is staying in its current location.

I use Time Machine and have my current set up backed up. Right now I am using 132 GB so it would not be viable for me to restore the Time Machine backup directly to the SSD from the Snow Leopard disc then transfer the user folder.

I should have a 3rd external hard drive available if necessary as a means of temporarily storing my stuff.

Thanks for any advice
 
If you bought an Intel 320 120GB SSD, be sure to swap the main HDD with the SSD and keep the optical drive to update the SSD firmware.
 
Hi VMMan,

What do you mean by keeping the Optical drive?

Do you have to put the optical drive back in the MBP
everytime you need to update the Firmware?

Thanks
 
shopsmart99 said:
Hi VMMan,

What do you mean by keeping the Optical drive?

Do you have to put the optical drive back in the MBP
everytime you need to update the Firmware?

Thanks
Click to expand...

For an Intel SSD, the firmware update software has to be burned to a CD/DVD. It can't be booted from a USB Flash drive or a USB CD/DVD drive.
 
Last edited:
Install the SSD in the HD spot and the HDD in the optical bay.

Boot the SL CD.

Use Disk Utility to partition your SSD.

Install SL on SSD.

When asked, migrate from your TM backup, cloned drive, or the stock HD but uncheck the User Documents.

Boot computer to make sure both drives are mounted.

How you decide to keep the users folder in the SSD with regular folders in the HDD vs truly having the users folder on the HDD is a matter of personal preference.

Good luck and don't strip any screws.

----------

I forgot to mention, I had installed the OS by booting from a USB flash drive. I imagine you could use a USB external CD drive for SL but haven't tried. Otherwise, you can stick the SSD in an external enclosure first to partition and install SL.
 
Thanks for the post but I am keeping the SSD in the optibay and HD in same spot because I care more for SMS on the HD than I do hibernation. Plus I have read that the HD can get a little loud in the optibay.

Here's what I think I'll do:
1. Put the SSD in the optibay spot
2. Create another user account
3. Use carbon copy cloner to copy everything but my user folder (aaron, not the new one) to the SSD
4. Boot off the SSD, login to the new user account I created--it's default user folder has been copied
5. Relocate my aaron user folder to the HD location
6. Wipe everything on the HD except for my user folder

I think it should work, any comments?

Good luck and don't strip any screws.
Click to expand...
I had just played around the other day as a practice run and managed to get all the screws off save for 2 that attached the subwoofer to the optical drive. Crappy radioshack screwdrivers.. I just bought a nice Wiha set off Amazon; we'll see how that goes.
 
macaaronb said:
Thanks for the post but I am keeping the SSD in the optibay and HD in same spot because I care more for SMS on the HD than I do hibernation. Plus I have read that the HD can get a little loud in the optibay.

Here's what I think I'll do:
1. Put the SSD in the optibay spot
2. Create another user account
3. Use carbon copy cloner to copy everything but my user folder (aaron, not the new one) to the SSD
4. Boot off the SSD, login to the new user account I created--it's default user folder has been copied
5. Relocate my aaron user folder to the HD location
6. Wipe everything on the HD except for my user folder

I think it should work, any comments?


I had just played around the other day as a practice run and managed to get all the screws off save for 2 that attached the subwoofer to the optical drive. Crappy radioshack screwdrivers.. I just bought a nice Wiha set off Amazon; we'll see how that goes.
Click to expand...


ye i agree with what he says do this
 
By placing the SSD in the optical slot you won't be taking full advantage of the read/write speeds right? Doesn't the optical have to be sata 3 for this?
 
Instead of relocating my entire user folder to the HD, I am going to keep the user folder hierarchy on the SSD because I want the Library folder to be on the faster SSD (since it will be read/written to a lot by apps) but create symbolic links to my Music, Movies, Pictures, Desktop, Documents, and Downloads which I will relocate to the HD. So in essence the user folder will be on the SSD but all the big files will be on the HD, though I will be able to interact with the folders just as I do now since the folders will really be symbolic links to the actual folders on the HD.

Oh and I forgot I'll have to reformat the SSD first before cloning to it and booting off it. So, revised instructions:

1. Put the SSD in the optibay spot
2. Reformat the SSD to Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
3. Use carbon copy cloner to copy everything but my Music, Movies, Pictures, Desktop, Documents, and Downloads to the SSD
4. Boot off the SSD
5. Create symbolic link folders for Music, Movies, etc to their location on the HD
6. Wipe everything on the HD except for the Music, Movies, etc folders
 
My SSD has successfully been installed, but like I thought I am affected by the 1.5 Gbps bug. OCZ has a tool to fix this but it needs to be run from a Linux live CD and now I don't have an optical drive. I really don't want to have to take apart my machine again . .

It is also on firmware 2.13 instead of 2.15 so I guess I'll have to update that too. No beachballs so far, just the diminished speed.
 
In case anyone is using this thread as reference, don't symlink your iTunes Music folder (or it may be iTunes Media in your case). I found out that it works for reading the tracks off the HDD but if you delete songs and choose to remove the file too, iTunes won't actually delete the file. There must be some sort of permissions problem of iTunes being able to delete files off the other drive. Instead, just use iTunes preferences to point the iTunes Music folder directly to its location on the HDD.
 
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