2nd Hard drive

[crl21]

I know there has been a lot of threads on this, but I'm just trying to straighten out all of the information given my setup. I have a new 2011 macbook pro with a 500gb 7200 stock hard drive. I'd like to take out the optibay and add in a 128 gb ssd. I've seen plenty of videos, so I'm fine on the mechanical aspects. I'm just needing some advice on components and configuration.

Can you advise me on the following items.

1) Advice on the best/fastest ssd that's compatible and reliable? I'm not that price sensitive.

2) Which drive to put in which bay?

3) Once the ssd is in place, how do I copy the disk image from the original HD to the SSD? I'll have programs installed by computer services, so I don't want to do a fresh install.

4) I'll be running parallels or fusion on the machine. This may be setup prior to the addition of the ssd. The 500gb drive will likely be partitioned 400mac 100windows. How will this work when I do the transfer? Can I just transfer over all of the mac files/os? Would you suggest moving over the windows OS? How much space should I allocate for each if I do? I'm running parallels just so I can run one program, SAS.

Thanks in advance. This is the first time I've ever tried to do something like this.

 

[simsaladimbamba]

1. Many threads on that can be found via MRoogle.
2. Use CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper to make a 1:1 copy.
2. SSD in place of the old HDD, HDD in the place of the ODD.

 

[bozz2006]

2. SSD in place of the old HDD, HDD in the place of the ODD.

If the stock HDD has SMS. If not you will want to keep it in the normal HDD bay, as the HDD bay has a sudden motion sensor and will park the HDD heads in case of a fall. I don't know if Apple's stock 500GB 7200RPM hard drive has a built-in SMS, but I don't believe the 500GB 5400RPM model does, so definitely check that out first.