2011 17" MBP supports 6Gbps SATA

[aznguyen316]

This has nothing to do with firmware -- the only cure is a redesign. With the ODD connected to a 3Gb/s port, there isn't anything to be done.

And remember that when you put a spinning drive in the OptiBay, it has no protection from Apple's Sudden Motion Sensor. So you'll need a drive that has its own sensor, like a few smaller WD Scorpio Black drives, but not the larger ones.

Also, you're limited to a 9.5mm rotational drive, so all the 12.5mm drives that would fit into the main HDD bay are out.

Congrats, Apple -- you really screwed the pooch on this one.

Interesting, so there are 2.5" 12.5 mm drives?? I'll have to look into that. I've always had my SSD in the main drive slot and a 9.5mm rotational in caddy in optibay. My generic optibay says on it only supports 1.5Gbps though lol so no use sticking my Vertex 2 in the optibay until I buy a better caddy.

ANy recommendations of putting in a Sata II SSD into optibay over main drive? If only for a 12.5mm drive in main slot I assume? Is the only reason to use a 12.5mm drive for the larger capacity drives or what?

 

[dnlt]

Oh that clears things up :] So this problem is only for the raid 0 speed junkies >.<

 

[idea_hamster]

Apple did not screw anything. You are doing a mini hardware hack that deviates from the MBP specs and design.

Suck it in and quit all your bitching.

Heaven forbid anyone do anything that "deviates" from Steve's vision. Now who are the 1984-style marching drones?

Careful not to choke on all the Kool-Aid, dude.

Oh that clears things up :] So this problem is only for the raid 0 speed junkies >.<

It's a problem for anyone who wants to substitute a storage drive for the optical drive.

 

[mac jones]

Interesting, so there are 2.5" 12.5 mm drives?? I'll have to look into that. I've always had my SSD in the main drive slot and a 9.5mm rotational in caddy in optibay. My generic optibay says on it only supports 1.5Gbps though lol so no use sticking my Vertex 2 in the optibay until I buy a better caddy.

ANy recommendations of putting in a Sata II SSD into optibay over main drive? If only for a 12.5mm drive in main slot I assume? Is the only reason to use a 12.5mm drive for the larger capacity drives or what?

I'm not so sure your limited to 9.5mm drives in the Optibays. I never actually used the Optibay's case (just the attachment) and just used double sided scotch tape (great stuff BTW. very strong). But these were SSD's. The Rotators i'd be a bit more worried about.

We shall see if these Optibays can be modified (which I imagine they could).

Another thing. Not to dismiss companies like OWC, but there are LOTS of places to get these Optibays for under $20. They are everywhere.

 

[aznguyen316]

yeah my caddy is definitely limited to 9.5mm. ANything thicker would make it stick up and the back casing would have some issues closing tightly.

Yeah my sata connector is only 1.5Gbps, when I feel the need I'll definitely look into buying a new connector for my optibay slot. But right now using a 5400/7200rpm drive I will not saturate that =)

 

[Apple Corps]

idea_hamster

Nice try to deflect with "comments on "deviating form Steve's vision and 1984 style marching drones" - but no cigar for you.

You are doing a hack and complaining your ass off about it not working. The very nature of unsupported "hacks" is difficulty and work arounds.

 

[Jiten]

It's a problem for anyone who wants to substitute a storage drive for the optical drive.

Perhaps if you plan to install a high speed SSD but not if you simply want to put a traditional platter drive in there for cheap mass storage.

 

[idea_hamster]

Nice try to deflect with "comments on "deviating form Steve's vision and 1984 style marching drones" - but no cigar for you.

You are doing a hack and complaining your ass off about it not working. The very nature of unsupported "hacks" is difficulty and work arounds.

Am I going to try to return my CTO machine when it arrives Thursday? No.

Is an Optibay install even on my to-do list for the next 6 months? No.

Am I going to see a substantial speed improvement over my 2006 C2D MB? No doubt.

But look -- here's my question:
Why not connect the ODD bay to a SATA III port?

If I can get an answer to that other than greed or patronizing conceit, I'll be happy -- seriously.

If the answer is, in fact, one of those two, I won't be so terribly surprised. After all, Apple is Apple -- pros at both. But this kind of decision isn't what makes companies great.

(I suspect -- and invite correction -- that you don't care why Apple did this. That's what makes us different. Not for better or worse. Just sayin'.)

BTW, the phrase is "suck it up," unless you're Charlie Munger....

 

[bcaslis]

Am I going to try to return my CTO machine when it arrives Thursday? No.

Is an Optibay install even on my to-do list for the next 6 months? No.

Am I going to see a substantial speed improvement over my 2006 C2D MB? No doubt.

But look -- here's my question:
Why not connect the ODD bay to a SATA III port?

If I can get an answer to that other than greed or patronizing conceit, I'll be happy -- seriously.

If the answer is, in fact, one of those three, I won't be so terribly surprised. After all, Apple is Apple -- pros at both. But this kind of decision isn't what makes companies great.

(I suspect -- and invite correction -- that you don't care why Apple did this. That's what makes us different. Not for better or worse. Just sayin'.)

BTW, the phrase is "suck it up," unless you're Charlie Munger.... ;-)

I don't know what is confusing here. Apple didn't design the MBP to have two HD bays. They designed it for an HD and an optical drive. There is no legitimate reason to hook an optical drive to SATAIII. I've worked in hardware and software design and these are the sorts of tradeoffs made all the time. There's nothing really to understand here.

 

[Apple Corps]

Apple is Apple - noted for their tight integration. "Hackintosh" projects are more difficult than PC works.

Apple did this because the MPB was NOT designed to have new SATA 3 SSDs put in the ODD bay. Just like my sedan is not designed to easily haul boulders around. I doubt it had much to do with $$$ - it may be a technical motherboard bus design issue / chip compatibility / or

DA DA

They just don't want to encourage hacking - their philosophy is TIGHT INTEGRATION.

You are frustrated by that - we get it - it does not mean that Apple screwed anything up though.

 

[idea_hamster]

I don't know what is confusing here. Apple didn't design the MBP to have two HD bays. They designed it for an HD and an optical drive. There is no legitimate reason to hook an optical drive to SATAIII. I've worked in hardware and software design and these are the sorts of tradeoffs made all the time. There's nothing really to understand here.

I do understand -- I was just hoping that someone could explain what was getting traded off. Really, that was it.

it may be a technical motherboard bus design issue / chip compatibility / or...

Right -- that was what I was asking.

You are frustrated by that - we get it - it does not mean that Apple screwed anything up though.

Fair enough, although at this late hour, that seems like it might get filed in the "It's not a bug; it's a feature" category.

Ok -- it's late. Spleep time.

Cheers!

 

[MBMarc]

It looks good, you don't seem to have quite the drop off on 4K reads that my 256GB gets. However, there's a big speed difference between the 128GB and the 256GB C300 drives.

How responsive is yours? Does it occasionally hang for 20-30 seconds or more? Lockups? etc?

Mine's is very responsive. Boots up in about 18 secs.. Apps start right up.. no sleep/hibernation issues.. Nothing...

I'm currently running firmware 002. There's an update to 006 I want to try it out to see if I get any improvements.

 

[johnsock]

I do understand -- I was just hoping that someone could explain what was getting traded off. Really, that was it.

There is an actual tradeoff being made here, although it's quite small taken by itself. Regardless of negotiated link speed between the port and the device, the logic running the back-end of the port link is clocked at the native speed of the port. A 6Gbps port is always clocked at a rate that is capable of supporting that speed. When talking to a slower device (after negotiating a 3Gbps or 1.5Gbps link) the port will just have unused clock cycles. From a power standpoint, a 6Gbps port uses more power than a 3Gbps which uses more than a 1.5Gbps. Additionally, having unused ports disconnected and disabled allows the chipset to shut them down so they don't waste any power not doing anything. This is the rationale behind using a 3GBps port for the ODD. The power savings is quite small, but when you are trying to squeeze every extra minute of battery life out of a device, it's the combination of small power savings like this that add up to make the difference.
I still think it sucks that I can't take full advantage of two Vertex 3 drives in the new MacBook Pro, but I'm less interested in battery life than performance. Unfortunately, my views are apparently not shared by marketing...

 

[idea_hamster]

... a 6Gbps port uses more power than a 3Gbps...

Thank you -- this is what I was talking about. That is a rationale that (whether I agree with it or not) a reasonable basis for this decision.

As you noted, I think it's a poor use of resources, but can, from their point of view make perfect sense -- especially with a little bit of willful blindness on Apple's part!

I wonder just what the difference in power draw is between a 6Gb/s port and the 3Gb/s port -- how sharp does my pencil have to be to see that?

 

[darwin022]

There's an update to 006 I want to try it out to see if I get any improvements.

Don't. Mine has not improved, probably got worse, after I upgraded from 001 -> 006 (via 002). If it's working, don't screw with it.

 

[stylinexpat]

Since we now have 6GB Sata speeds I don't think one really needs the option to run raid. With a good Vertex 3 SSD running 6GB Sata that should be quite quick I would be happy with that alone.

It is a bit odd on the other hand as to why they would make 1 end with 6GB and the other with 3GB Sata speeds Apple should know that people who buy their products are usually fanatics and fanatics are usually picky and geeky.

 

[darwin022]

Since we now have 6GB Sata speeds I don't think one really needs the option to run raid. With a good Vertex 3 SSD running 6GB Sata that should be quite quick I would be happy with that alone.

It is a bit odd on the other hand as to why they would make 1 end with 6GB and the other with 3GB Sata speeds Apple should know that people who buy their products are usually fanatics and fanatics are usually picky and geeky.

They have done this in the past. One of my older macbook pros had SATA II (3Gbps) on the primary SATA controller, 1.5Gbps on the secondary optical drive controllers. They don't expect or support putting another drive in the optical bay, so there was no need for them to use a 6Gbps controller for a device that doesn't even need SATA II. I see the ability to put a hard drive there a bonus into making the computer even better than it is. However, I don't expect Apple to support that configuration (yet), produce an update to enable 6Gbps on the optical bay SATA port. I also don't get pissed when something is limited.

It's Apple, they ARE going to come out with awesome products with limitations, and some of those limitations we just won't be able to work around. It's just the nature of the game.

 

[cmckechnie]

So how does this sound. I get an SSD drive today (256/512GB) from Apple (apparently it's only SATA-II anyway) so I use that for a while, then when newer SATA-III SSD drives are available, I pick up one of those, put it into the main HD bay and move the Apple SSD into the optical bay. Then, everything is working at it's peak performance and it's all SSD all day long.

Sound like a good plan?

 

[RainCityMacFan]

So how does this sound. I get an SSD drive today (256/512GB) from Apple (apparently it's only SATA-II anyway) so I use that for a while, then when newer SATA-III SSD drives are available, I pick up one of those, put it into the main HD bay and move the Apple SSD into the optical bay. Then, everything is working at it's peak performance and it's all SSD all day long.

Sound like a good plan?

Excellent plan if you have the money for it.

I plan on buying a MBP with a stock 750GB 5400 RPM, then when the new OWC SATA 6Gbp/s drives come out, I will buy that with a Data Doubler and install it into the main hard drive. Buy a WD Black Scorpio 7200RPM 500GB and put that into my Optibay.

But now that we know the HDD is SATA 6Gbps and the ODD is SATA 3Gbps, what SSD will you guys buy for the HDD? OCZ Vertex 3, Intel, or will you guys wait for the OWC like me? Apparently, the OWC won't be out for some time T.T from the lack of ETA by OWC Grant on the OWC Blog. *sigh*

 

[Guy Mancuso]

My 15 inch should be here in another hour or so . But my plan since i am running Raid 0 right now with 2 OWC 200gb Extreme Pro's is put them in the new box. When we finally get new Sata III SSD drives is sell one of my SSD drives leave the other in optical bay than just put OS on the new Sata III drive and use my existing SSD as data storage or for me image storage and maybe a partition with a OS backup on it. So when traveling if one goes south you still have a OS drive on board with either drive. I should point out the data storage is very temporary and all my images get offloaded after processing to Drobo and other external drives.

The new Sata III drive will smoke my current Raid 0 so just running that single drive should be great.

End of the day regardless of box itself. It will run faster just with the Sata III

 

[Apple Corps]

Excellent plan if you have the money for it.

I plan on buying a MBP with a stock 750GB 5400 RPM, then when the new OWC SATA 6Gbp/s drives come out, I will buy that with a Data Doubler and install it into the main hard drive. Buy a WD Black Scorpio 7200RPM 500GB and put that into my Optibay.

But now that we know the HDD is SATA 6Gbps and the ODD is SATA 3Gbps, what SSD will you guys buy for the HDD? OCZ Vertex 3, Intel, or will you guys wait for the OWC like me? Apparently, the OWC won't be out for some time T.T from the lack of ETA by OWC Grant on the OWC Blog. *sigh*

I would not fixate on the OWC brand as such - my focus will be on the performance / SLC or MLC / Sandforce controller (unless something better comes out) / etc. The new Intel 510 series may be a rushed to market stopgap.

 

[Guy Mancuso]

That is the question of the day actually which to buy in Sata III. I have had excellent luck and service with OWC and actually i bought my first 200 gb OWC long before my second unit I bought. I wanted to Raid 0 them both but the firmware was different. Called OWC and they sent out a brand new one to match the new one I just bought free of charge and this was 6 months later. So I give them a lot of credit for customer support. Frankly I'm nervous about the Intel and the Crucial's. I will NOT buy OCZ stuff at all. Like a lot of folks my stuff is mission critical as a photographer out in the field working for clients. I simply cannot not lose data or go down. Safer for me is better but I am a backup junky as well.

 

[Guy Mancuso]

Just as i was writing the above post guess who showed up. FedX. Going to play. LOL

 

[Artagra]

But look -- here's my question:
Why not connect the ODD bay to a SATA III port?

If I can get an answer to that other than greed or patronizing conceit, I'll be happy -- seriously.

My guess? Power consumption. You probably found that an Apple engineer realised that the SATA II port uses slightly less power than the SATA III port, and because Apple has no plans to put anything in the optical bay other than a DVD writer, they went with the SATA II port.

Apple gets very impressive battery life out of their machines, and the reason they do is because of this type of attention to detail. It's one of their greatest strengths (obsessive attention to detail) but it can also be a weakness, as in this case.

 

[firmansolutions]

Recommended setup given SATA optical bay situation

Hi,

So my new 2011 MBP 2.2ghz with a 500gb 7200rpm is arriving soon, plus 8th of RAM and a C300 256gb SSD from crucial, plus an Optibay inspired chassis from Hong Kong.

I mainly work with Windows VM's using Visual Studio and SQL Server BI stack. I was planning to park the SSD into the optical bay and put my VMs on it (they are in Trucrypt containers).

However I have been giving some consideration to putting the SSD (with OS X and VM Trucrypt continers)into the HDD bay and moving my large iTunes and iPhoto libraries, plus my personal data folders to the HDD in the optical bay.

The 2nd option is a lot more work and possibly more error prone.

I am not after super speed, this is only a DEV machine, we have servers and clusters for the serious work. I just need my VMs to be super responsive when loading, waking from hibernation, and loading SQL Server and Excel datasets into RAM.

I expect the elcheapo chassis from Hong kong will be of the 1.5 gbps variety, but will buy a quality version from MCE if it's warranted.

So after reading this thread, i am leaning towards the simple first option - SSD into the optical bay, but I am wondering if the Crucial SSD will function properly there.

Or if I should send the SSD back to crucial unopened and buy a more appropriate drive (no more than current £360 spend).

I haven't got the experience to do all the experimentation and associated builds so a prudent, straightforward plan is very desirable. I need to be up and running. I can change things later as this subject matures.

Thanks in advance. I think there is quite a lot of interest in this issue, particularly around the Crucial C300 and I am happy to share results.

Cheers
Firman