2TB in a MacBook Pro?

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maskedscientist

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 8, 2009
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Hey guys… I'm interested in buying a new 17" macbook pro, when they upgrade some of the specs in the coming weeks… But I couldn't wait to start the forum, to get the discussion rolling.

The 17" MacBook pro supports a 12.5mm hard drive, which means it can hold a 1TB hard drive. But, can I use the MCE optibay to add a second 12.5mm drive? Does the optibay allow a 12.5mm drive? Can I get 2TB into a MacBook Pro?
 

Gabriel GR

Gabriel GR

macrumors 6502a
Jul 12, 2009
716
1
Athens, Greece
maskedscientist said:
Hey guys… I'm interested in buying a new 17" macbook pro, when they upgrade some of the specs in the coming weeks… But I couldn't wait to start the forum, to get the discussion rolling.

The 17" MacBook pro supports a 12.5mm hard drive, which means it can hold a 1TB hard drive. But, can I use the MCE optibay to add a second 12.5mm drive? Does the optibay allow a 12.5mm drive? Can I get 2TB into a MacBook Pro?
Click to expand...


From the optibay site: said:
OptiBay Hard Drive At a Glance
Up to 750GB additional internal hard disk storage
Up to 1.5TB total internal hard disk storage!
Can be used as an individual volume, as part of a RAID array, or combined with internal hard drive as one very large volume
Bootable
Easy setup using Apple's Disk Utility program
Neglible impact on battery life
S.M.A.R.T. drive status compliant
Optional external SuperDrive or optical drive enclosure
3 Year Warranty
Click to expand...
I don't know of any 9.5mm 750gb drive so I suppose the optibay is compatible with 12mm drives.

Why don't you send them an email?
 
G

gerabbi

macrumors regular
Feb 8, 2009
155
0
Requirements

Unibody MacBook Pro 13-inch, 15-inch or 17-inch, or Unibody MacBook 13-inch
OptiBay Bare Enclosure with SATA Hard Drive Interface requires a 2.5" SATA hard drive 9.5mm or less in height.
Portable USB 2.0 SuperDrive requires two available USB ports


I copy/pasted this from the MCE web site. While I love the idea I don't think that 2 TB is possible yet. But you could do 1 TB and 640 GB that should work.
 
J

jawa12083

macrumors member
Feb 9, 2010
83
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scottlinux said:
^Take out the optical drive, put in another hard drive that this thread is discussing: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/
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The OP's question, is IF the 1TB harddrive will fit into the optibay.

I've heard of a 2.5" 1TB SSD.... that came out before WD and it's 500GB harddrive, but it's not available for the general public. The Acer Lambourghini vx5 has it in it though... You could always that take apart....
 
ARF900

ARF900

macrumors 65816
Oct 30, 2009
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What are you trying to store that you would need with you at all times? Wouldnt an external drive make more sense?
 
Z

zipa

macrumors 65816
Feb 19, 2010
1,442
1
plaxico44 said:
Who the hell needs 2TB? haha
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I remember asking the same question when I got my first computer with a hard drive. "How would I ever fill those 40 MB, that's insane!"

I have since learned not to ask that question.
 

winninganthem

winninganthem

macrumors 6502a
Jun 10, 2008
790
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zipa said:
I remember asking the same question when I got my first computer with a hard drive. "How would I ever fill those 40 MB, that's insane!"

I have since learned not to ask that question.
Click to expand...
2TB in this day and age though.. in a mobile machine.. I dunno, to me it just sounds excessive. If you really need that amount of space just carry external drives.
 
D

dekka007

macrumors member
Jun 6, 2009
99
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The whole point is so you do not need to carry all those external drives when you travel. I hate the clutter of USB drives.

Go for the 2 internal 1TB in RAID0 for extra performance :)
 
Lone Deranger

Lone Deranger

macrumors 68000
Apr 23, 2006
1,713
1,864
Tokyo, Japan
I'd love to have 2TB in my 17" MBP.

Right now I'm generating very detailed Conifer trees for a 3D project I'm working on. Many of which are upwards of 6-8 million polygons per tree. This generates .OBJ files of 600-800 MegaBytes. Turning these into .mi files (mentalImages archives) for proxy rendering in Maya doubles that. Then generating good quality Final Gather maps often also in the order of a couple of hundred MB's. Rendering out hundreds and hundreds of 16bpc 2K frames in a variety of passes, each 8-10MB per file, plus all the additional files (scene files, comp scripts, texture maps, shadow maps, etc) which can add up to many GigaBytes of accumulated data. Before you know if you've filled up the default 500GB drive.

This is a MacBook *PRO* we are talking about. There are those of us who do use it in a professional environment as opposed to merely using it to browse, listen to iTunes and faffing around with handbrake.

On Avatar at Weta Digital we generated a total of 1 PetaByte of data (one million GigaBytes), and that was with constant (daily) clean-up of files that weren't vital and could be re-generated.

Having 2TB internal is far more preferable to carrying around additional external drives. That's the domain of back-up drives. I don't need the extra clutter. :)
 
galstaph

galstaph

macrumors 6502a
Jul 24, 2002
811
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The Great White North Eh
zipa said:
I remember asking the same question when I got my first computer with a hard drive. "How would I ever fill those 40 MB, that's insane!"

I have since learned not to ask that question.
Click to expand...
lol... my first machine was my compaq 8086 luggable with 640k (didn't have the optional HD)


after that I had 286 toshiba laptop with a whopping 21mb HD it ran ms-dos 6 quite well who could need more than that... it ran wordperfect, dos, fs4 (the beuaty of monochromatic flight), stunts, and various utility programs nd featured a 3.5" floppy drive as well:D


those were the days.... </nostalgia>
 
gwsat

gwsat

macrumors 68000
Apr 12, 2008
1,920
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Tulsa
galstaph said:
lol... my first machine was my compaq 8086 luggable with 640k (didn't have the optional HD)

after that I had 286 toshiba laptop with a whopping 21mb HD it ran ms-dos 6 quite well who could need more than that... it ran wordperfect, dos, fs4 (the beuaty of monochromatic flight), stunts, and various utility programs nd featured a 3.5" floppy drive as well:D


those were the days.... </nostalgia>
Click to expand...
Yep, me too. My first computer was one of those old Compaq luggables. I thought that I was rich and famous, though, and got the second generation 80286 machine with a, Wow!, 10Gb hard drive. After all, who could ever use more than 10Gb, right?

I, too, had one of the first generation 286 Toshiba laptops. What a dog! I finally gave it to my housekeeper who gave it to her computer savvy grandson.

Those, indeed, were the days, when the old LaSalle ran great. :)
 
fehhkk

fehhkk

macrumors 6502a
Jun 11, 2009
632
109
Chicago, IL
jawa12083 said:
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The OP's question, is IF the 1TB harddrive will fit into the optibay.

I've heard of a 2.5" 1TB SSD.... that came out before WD and it's 500GB harddrive, but it's not available for the general public. The Acer Lambourghini vx5 has it in it though... You could always that take apart....
Click to expand...
What 1TB 2.5" mobile drives exist in the market?

Excluding SSDs, the max you can do I think is 750GB x 2.

edit: This just in: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136545&cm_re=1tb_2.5_hard_drive-_-22-136-545-_-Product , but one of them might not fit in the regular hard drive bay.
 
C

cathyy

macrumors 6502a
Apr 12, 2008
727
1
galstaph said:
lol... my first machine was my compaq 8086 luggable with 640k (didn't have the optional HD)

after that I had 286 toshiba laptop with a whopping 21mb HD it ran ms-dos 6 quite well who could need more than that... it ran wordperfect, dos, fs4 (the beuaty of monochromatic flight), stunts, and various utility programs nd featured a 3.5" floppy drive as well:D


those were the days.... </nostalgia>
Click to expand...
Dang. I thought I was gonna win with my 25mb HDD.
 
gianly1985

gianly1985

macrumors 6502a
May 30, 2008
798
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Main bay: WD Scorpio Blue 1tb (12mm, fits in ANY UNIBODY mbp)

Optibay: Toshiba 750gb drive (9.5mm)

Total= around 1750gb



BUT doing an SSD+HDD hybrid system sounds FAR better.

Main bay: WD Scorpio Blue 1tb (12mm)

Optibay: Intel x25-m 160gb (7mm or 9.5mm with plastic spacer), used as boot disk

Total= around 1160gb, but blazing fast OS and apps
 
ayeying

ayeying

macrumors 601
Dec 5, 2007
4,548
11
Yay Area, CA
gianly1985 said:
Main bay: WD Scorpio Blue 1tb (12mm, fits in ANY UNIBODY mbp)

Optibay: Toshiba 750gb drive (9.5mm)

Total= around 1750gb



BUT doing an SSD+HDD hybrid system sounds FAR better.

Main bay: WD Scorpio Blue 1tb (12mm)

Optibay: Intel x25-m 160gb (7mm or 9.5mm with plastic spacer), used as boot disk

Total= around 1160gb, but blazing fast OS and apps
Click to expand...
Why not just RAID-0 the two drives. It's fine. SSDs are fast but if you're accessing a lot of information off the hard drive, its going to be slow again.
 
gianly1985

gianly1985

macrumors 6502a
May 30, 2008
798
0
ayeying said:
Why not just RAID-0 the two drives. It's fine.
Click to expand...
Even 2 RAID-0 Velociraptors 10k suck compared to a good SSD.

SSDs are fast but if you're accessing a lot of information off the hard drive, its going to be slow again.
Click to expand...
SSD for OS+Apps and HDD for storage is fine, even if you access libraries from the HDD you still have crazy fast programs, crazy fast startup, etc.
 

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