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2011 Optical Bay Hard Drive Sudden Motion Sensor Enabled w/ video

I kept my 1TB drive in the regular spot and put my 120GB SSD in the optibay. So, different issue:

Half the time when I open iTunes it won't find the XML file - but it will open the folder it's in so I have to select it. I think this might be due to my 1TB going to sleep after awhile. Also, same thing will happen with Lightroom's lrcat file. If I disable sleep on the drive, will I take a huge battery hit?
 
1) Play a Full HD movie off the HDD.
2) gently wave computer in air.
3) If it stops playing, SMS is working.

If you start playing a movie that is of sufficiently high bit rate to come close to saturating the HDD bandwidth on it's own, the computer will not be able to buffer the movie. Therefore even small periods of SMS parked drive head will stop the movie playing.

Or at least it does on my computer (7200rpm stock HDD), even with very gentle waving.

Doesn't work with standard def movies.

(Handbrake encoding, default setting, 1918x816 px output)
 
I plan on getting my Optibay setup sometime this week or next, so I'll try out your methods when I get them.

Would a Blu-Ray rip be fine?
 
eC1990ho said:
so what were your results?
Click to expand...

Damn SSD hasn't arrived yet.

When it arrives, I will post again with my HDD in my optical bay. I just need the factory SuperDrive in my MBP to install SL onto my SSD. Then I will take it out and install the OWC DataDoubler and place my HDD in there and just boot like that.

Meanwhile, I'll be getting a Blu-Ray movie to play.
 
Ok.

I finally got my OWC 6G Extreme SSD. It was in the mailbox for a god damn week (don't ask).

But I played Battle LA, The King's Speech, and The Eagle, all .mkv Blu-Ray rips around 6GB. I played the movie, picked the MBP off, and slightly dropped it while it was in the HDD.

It makes a clunking noise, as if the head just parked, and moments later (almost less than a second) the video is filled with artifacts, freezes, and picks up again.

Now I took out my HDD from the main bay and placed it in the optical bay and did the same thing. Same results.

Hitachi OEM HDD, I think has a built in SMS function aided by Apple's custom firmware.
 
Kind of on the same topic: I know people recommend to 'untick' the option for mac to put the drive to sleep when possible when an SSD is installed; however, is there anyway to just enable the sleep feature just for the HDD if there is an HDD in the optibay?
 
KJmoon117 said:
Ok.

I finally got my OWC 6G Extreme SSD. It was in the mailbox for a god damn week (don't ask).

But I played Battle LA, The King's Speech, and The Eagle, all .mkv Blu-Ray rips around 6GB. I played the movie, picked the MBP off, and slightly dropped it while it was in the HDD.

It makes a clunking noise, as if the head just parked, and moments later (almost less than a second) the video is filled with artifacts, freezes, and picks up again.

Now I took out my HDD from the main bay and placed it in the optical bay and did the same thing. Same results.

Hitachi OEM HDD, I think has a built in SMS function aided by Apple's custom firmware.
Click to expand...

That does kinda prove it, well done!
 
WonkyPanda said:
Kind of on the same topic: I know people recommend to 'untick' the option for mac to put the drive to sleep when possible when an SSD is installed; however, is there anyway to just enable the sleep feature just for the HDD if there is an HDD in the optibay?
Click to expand...

My setup: Vertex 3 MI in main bay and Hitachi 500 GB original HDD in optibay. Have ticked the option and set the HDD to sleep after 1 min via pmset

Result: SSD (system drive) is always active and HDD goes asleep after 1 min and only wakes up when it's needed. (You can check that via SpindownHD, nice little monitoring tool)

Only drawback: When HDD sleeps and is not unmounted, stupid software like MS Office 2011 wakes the HDD when you want to save the file ('File' --> 'Save As') and this delays the dialogue for about 2s --> really annoying, but only happens for certain Software. A possible workaround is just unmounting the HDD via a script and a Toggle in the dock when it is not needed. (I have e.g. just my RAW Pic collection and the movies stored on the HDD due to pure size issues).

Cheers, S.
 
derlockere said:
My setup: Vertex 3 MI in main bay and Hitachi 500 GB original HDD in optibay. Have ticked the option and set the HDD to sleep after 1 min via pmset

Result: SSD (system drive) is always active and HDD goes asleep after 1 min and only wakes up when it's needed. (You can check that via SpindownHD, nice little monitoring tool)

Only drawback: When HDD sleeps and is not unmounted, stupid software like MS Office 2011 wakes the HDD when you want to save the file ('File' --> 'Save As') and this delays the dialogue for about 2s --> really annoying, but only happens for certain Software. A possible workaround is just unmounting the HDD via a script and a Toggle in the dock when it is not needed. (I have e.g. just my RAW Pic collection and the movies stored on the HDD due to pure size issues).

Cheers, S.
Click to expand...

can you explain a few of those steps a little more in-depth? How do you let the SSD be awake at all times and allow the system to turn off the HDD after X amount of minutes? It seems like a terminal command I assume. Thanks!
 
Nice!

I just installed Intel 510 SSD into the sata III port & moved the hitachi HDD into the optical bay.

The HDD does make lot of noise. But it sleeps after a while and it is quiet.

Too scared to try out the shaking tests people have suggested.

Earlier I tried putting SSD into optical bay but the link speed went down to 3 Gigabit. So moved back the SDD to sata III port.

The differnce is noticeble during boot. 6 seconds --SSD in sataIII port Vs 19 seconds - SSD in optical bay.

I bought a $10 optical bay. I see no reason to buy a $100 optical bay doing the same function (no circuit logic just straight connectors).
 
bump. anyone do any further testing of this? particularly those who are using an SSD in the main bay and a aftermarket drive without a G sensor in the optical bay.
 
Testing the SMS

A couple of weeks ago I installed an Intel 520 SSD into my early 2011 15" MBP. I placed the original HDD in the optical bay, with the help of an inexpensive nimitz-adaptor, so that the SSD would benefit from the SATAIII-port speed. And I'm quite happy with the results.

The HDD-sounds does seep out more now though, probably because the optical bay is directly under the speaker grill and right beside the optical disk slot, but an aggressive disk sleep setting takes care of that. I can work for hours without having the HDD spin up.

I have tried the "lift and simulate a fall" method mentioned above and can clearly hear how the HDD parks its head assembly with a loud clicking noise, even though it's positioned in the optical bay. If I turn the sudden motion sensor off (sudo pmset -a sms 0) I don't hear any parking sound from the disk when simulating a free fall, as expected. Interestingly enough it seems like the computer needs to go to sleep between issuing the command to turn the SMS functionality on again (sudo pmset -a sms 1) and before the SMS-functionality kicks in again.

And yes I did run an HD movie at the time of the free fall tests, and yes when the SMS kicks in the film stutters, but not otherwise.

So, my conclusion is the SMS works fine even when the HDD is positioned in the optical bay (at least on my early 2011 15" MBP.)
 
Woohoo! Confirmed!

I installed a 512GB Samsung 840 Pro in the main drive bay of my 15" 2011 Macbook Pro and moved the 750GB Toshiba spinning hard disk to the optical bay via OWC Datadoubler.

Because of the SSD I downloaded TrimEnabler and paid for the extra features -- it has an option to toggle Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS) ON/OFF.

So I tested it.

Sure enough, when SMS is on, the drive makes a pretty loud audible *CLICK!* when I 'pretend drop' my macbook.

Toggling SMS off and doing the same (and risking damage to the hard disk) it doesn't produce a click.

HOT DOGITTY DOG.... I guess the Toshiba drive has built-in SMS after all!
 
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