Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Optibay w/12.5mm Drives?

sovereign

sovereign

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 13, 2009
271
121
I have two WD10TPVT 1TB drives on the way from Oyen and two OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini enclosures coming as well. Originally thought to simply replace my Seagate 500gb drive with one of the 1TB drives and put the remaining 1TB WD and the removed 500GB Seagate in the enclosures, to use as a cloned backup of the internal and for extra space.

But... I am curious if one of the WD10TPVT drives could be used in an Optibay or similar, and put a X-25m in the standard bay? Or, will the 12.5mm height not work in the Optibay or similar setup? I suppose I could throw the X-25m in the Optibay and the WD10TPVT in the HD bay, but it seems that most of the problems crop up from not having the boot drive in the standard location?

System specs in sigline...
 
sovereign said:
I have two WD10TPVT 1TB drives on the way from Oyen and two OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro mini enclosures coming as well. Originally thought to simply replace my Seagate 500gb drive with one of the 1TB drives and put the remaining 1TB WD and the removed 500GB Seagate in the enclosures, to use as a cloned backup of the internal and for extra space.

But... I am curious if one of the WD10TPVT drives could be used in an Optibay or similar, and put a X-25m in the standard bay? Or, will the 12.5mm height not work in the Optibay or similar setup? I suppose I could throw the X-25m in the Optibay and the WD10TPVT in the HD bay, but it seems that most of the problems crop up from not having the boot drive in the standard location?

System specs in sigline...
Click to expand...

hi,

12.5mm will work in the optibay,

you can have your boot drive wherever you want without issues.

i currently have my boot drive in my optibay and everything on my system works as it should.
 
I tried my WD10TPVT out in the optibay and it clearly protruded. Did you install it and get everything screwed in with the WD10TPVT in the optibay MMM?

I didnt go that far, just put it in the optibay, said "damn too big" and put the x25m in its place! :)

Sadly, my WD10TPVT had to be RMA'd to Oyen so I am back to a 500gb Hitachi for now...
 
depends on what adapter you used on wether or not you can screw it in,

the newmodeus adapter will require double sided tape to make it work and a bit of screwing around.

the legit optibay im not sure as i have never used it, but the original with the drive sticks upwards does it not?, if so it will work fine for clearance.

hope this helps
 
The new modeus hard drive enclosure will not work with the 12.7mm drives, but the original HDD bay itself has enough room for those kinds of drive (confirmed by Other World Computing) The optical drive that comes with the macbook pro I think is 9.5mm, so only those kinds of drives can fit in there.

I'm wondering also if a 12.7mm enclosure will fit in the optical drive bay area??
 
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."


I copy/pasted this from MCE makers of Optibay. While there may be some from another company that will accommodate the 12.5 drives apparently Optibay won't at least currently.
 
MacModMachine said:
my hibernation works great actually, it requires some terminal coding, ill have it all in my blog when im done the install video's.
Click to expand...

Sweet! Let us know when you have that up. I'll need it as well because I plan on putting an SSD in the hard drive caddy and have one of those 1TB 12.7mm drives in the HDD bay. It would be nice to put the HDD to sleep when not in use.

C'mon Apple! Release the new MBPs so I can do this nice little project!
 
eccentricglow said:
Sweet! Let us know when you have that up. I'll need it as well because I plan on putting an SSD in the hard drive caddy and have one of those 1TB 12.7mm drives in the HDD bay. It would be nice to put the HDD to sleep when not in use.

C'mon Apple! Release the new MBPs so I can do this nice little project!
Click to expand...

That's not hibernation, but I don't know if the two are linked. You can just eject the HDD when not in use, although I wish there was a better solution since I have my iTunes library on the HDD in my optical bay. Mounting and ejecting isn't very practical for that.
 
I have a newmodeus on the way. New plan is to put the X25-M in there and the WD10TPVT in the HD bay. Probably the way to do it anyway since the Scorpius Blue does not have SMS.
 
sovereign said:
I have a newmodeus on the way. New plan is to put the X25-M in there and the WD10TPVT in the HD bay. Probably the way to do it anyway since the Scorpius Blue does not have SMS.
Click to expand...

Let me know how it works out for you! I hope it works out. :) I haven't gotten an MBP yet because of the pending update.
 
I used a fenvi optibay clone (retails for about 15US$ in China, MCE optibay is a complete rip-off) with a PATA connector on the back and a SATA connector for the HDD in my 15" late 2006 Merom Macbook Pro. I have been reading everywhere that 12.5mm drives would not fit into the MBP with an optibay caddy. I tried nevertheless because I really wanted 1TB in my notebook. Even though the HDD will exceed the optibay caddy, the topcase closes without any effort.

So here I am writing from my non-unibody 15" MBP, with an Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD in the regular HDD bay as the system drive and a 1TB WD10TPVT in the optibay as a data drive.

later non-unibody MBPs might need a different caddy (with SATA connector on back)

Bottom line: 12.5mm HDD fit into non-unibody 15" MBPs (Merom definitely, Penryn probably) in the optical bay with an adapter caddy
 
whiskers3000 said:
So here I am writing from my non-unibody 15" MBP, with an Intel X25-M 80 GB SSD in the regular HDD bay as the system drive and a 1TB WD10TPVT in the optibay as a data drive.

later non-unibody MBPs might need a different caddy (with SATA connector on back)

Bottom line: 12.5mm HDD fit into non-unibody 15" MBPs (Merom definitely, Penryn probably) in the optical bay with an adapter caddy
Click to expand...

You are not concerned about the lack of SMS for the WD10TVPT?
 
sorry, i might be missing something, but what is SMS? I looked all over the net for it in conjunction with hard drives and I am none the wiser.

One more thought for non-unibody MBP owners: the 12.5mm 1TB drive would probably also fit in the main HDD bay, the problem not being the clearance the top case gives, but the SATA connector flat cable with two connectors of 2mm thickness which runs on top of the drive. if those connectors could be somehow relocated it probably would work.
 
whiskers3000 said:
sorry, i might be missing something, but what is SMS? I looked all over the net for it in conjunction with hard drives and I am none the wiser.

One more thought for non-unibody MBP owners: the 12.5mm 1TB drive would probably also fit in the main HDD bay, the problem not being the clearance the top case gives, but the SATA connector flat cable with two connectors of 2mm thickness which runs on top of the drive. if those connectors could be somehow relocated it probably would work.
Click to expand...

SMS= Sudden Motion Sensor

Word is that the Scorpio Blue drives do not have it. It is not necessary or even wanted for a drive to not have it when it is in the factory location, as it is protected via a built in system. But for a location other than factory, it could be a problem. How much of a risk? I don't know...
 
Ok. I found the 28 page thread on this topic with all the Sudden Motion Sensor discussion. I wasn't really worried about it, but thought why not do it the right way then and put the WD10TPVT into the HDD bay with the SMS and the SSD into the optibay (cause SSD doesn't need SMS anyway).

Sad news is that the 12.5mm WD10TVPT wouldn't fit into the HDD bay by maybe half a millimeter, even after rerouting the flat wire and the IR Sensor/Power Light connectors to the side of the drive. I guess I could have forced it to shut, but there would have been tension on the topcase.

So now I went back to SSD in HD bay and HDD in optibay. I will be careful not to drop my laptop :)

(late 2006 Core 2 Duo MBP, 2,33 Mhz)
 
whiskers3000 said:
Ok. I found the 28 page thread on this topic with all the Sudden Motion Sensor discussion. I wasn't really worried about it, but thought why not do it the right way then and put the WD10TPVT into the HDD bay with the SMS and the SSD into the optibay (cause SSD doesn't need SMS anyway).

Sad news is that the 12.5mm WD10TVPT wouldn't fit into the HDD bay by maybe half a millimeter, even after rerouting the flat wire and the IR Sensor/Power Light connectors to the side of the drive. I guess I could have forced it to shut, but there would have been tension on the topcase.

So now I went back to SSD in HD bay and HDD in optibay. I will be careful not to drop my laptop :)

(late 2006 Core 2 Duo MBP, 2,33 Mhz)
Click to expand...

I thought it was common knowledge that only the 17" Pre-Unibody MacBook Pros can handle 12.5mm in the Hard Drive slot?
 
Yes, I read that information several times. But I also read that 12.5 would not fit into non-unibody MBPs in an optibay caddy. I decided to try it out by putting a 3mm piece of cardboard on my 9.5 mm drive in the optical bay and close the topcase. It worked, so I purchased a WD10TPVT to put just there. The HDD fit there as expected. The clearance in the HD bay appeared to be identical to the location where the optical drive was. This led me to believe that it should be possible to have it there anyway. Since I never read posts about somebody actually trying it out themselves, I decided to give it a shot. I don't exactly know why it didn't work but I suppose the hard drive doesn't directly rest against the back cover in the HD bay.
 
whiskers3000 said:
Yes, I read that information several times. But I also read that 12.5 would not fit into non-unibody MBPs in an optibay caddy. I decided to try it out by putting a 3mm piece of cardboard on my 9.5 mm drive in the optical bay and close the topcase. It worked, so I purchased a WD10TPVT to put just there. The HDD fit there as expected. The clearance in the HD bay appeared to be identical to the location where the optical drive was. This led me to believe that it should be possible to have it there anyway. Since I never read posts about somebody actually trying it out themselves, I decided to give it a shot. I don't exactly know why it didn't work but I suppose the hard drive doesn't directly rest against the back cover in the HD bay.
Click to expand...

I never read that a 12.5mm drive won't fit into the Optibay for 15" Non-Unibody, only the Hard Drive bay.

It didn't work for the 15" because the drive in the hard drive bay uses mounts and the drive is literally NOT touching the base of the enclosure, it's floating in between. If it touches the base, you'll have electric shocks, problems or burn out the drive if not electrically shielded.

For the 17", the mounts are slightly lower, plus theres slightly more upper keyboard case panel room.

The optibay works because its literally touching the base of the optibay, therefore you have more clearance.

I'm using a 1TB + 750GB (Both 12.5mm drives) in my 17" Core Duo MacBook Pro, with RAID-0 too. Works great.
 
Newmodeus, X25-M, and WD TPVT10 installed. Super easy to install. No problems so far. SSD is NICE! Like others have said, it would be hard to go back to a regular HD.

P1000032.jpg


P1000033.jpg


P1000035.jpg
 
I'm putting the 1tb in the HD Bay and a 640GB in the Optibay. The 640GB has the OS with Bootcamp on it.

Will the MBP automatically start up from the 640GB in the Opitbay?
Will Windows from Bootcamp automatically start up from the 640GB in the Optibay?

I plan to just use the 1tb for storage and since it's 12.5mm it won't fit in the Optibay. I don't want to have to re-install the OS's on the 1tb if I don't have to.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back