Hi everyone,
Well the main reason i decided to buy the new macbook pro over the older one was largely the fact that the new one had a sata optical drive, and therefore more easily able to accept a two hard drive setup. So once i got it home i immediately took i apart to access the challenges of installing a second hard drive. My ultimate goal is to have a 1TB raid with two 500gb 2.5in drives. So this is meant to be a little build post of my experience.
After i opened the notebook, i determined what connectors are going to be needed. The sata connector that is connected to the motherboard, i mean logicboard, is a micro sata female that holds both power and data. The sata connection on the 2.5 sata hard drives are a standard sata male. So i needed to find a micro sata male to normal sata male for data and power. I went with cables from satacables.com.
part number - MSSA-004 which is the micro sata male to standard sata data female and the Molex four pin
part number - SS-08MPS which is the standard sata power female to molex four pin
When i got the cables, i wanted to solder the four wires of the two molex connectors together to make a more manipulatable cable, and to make it a single cable.
I wanted to retain the ability to completely reverse any modification i make to the notebook, so i wanted to created a little tray for the hard drive to sit in. I wanted the tray to use the same screws as the optical drive does and be easily removable. i went to Lowes and picked up some 5" x 7" Aluminum Step Flashing, which is a thin piece of aluminum that is bendable by hand and cuttable with a decent pair of scissors, very suitable for making a hard drive tray. I formed the aluminum in the shape that i wanted and mounted it.
Now i am not completely finished with this project as u can see in the pictures, i havent completely thought out how i am going to connect the hard drive to the tray. i will probably just use some double sided tape or something, i am open to suggestions, lol.
I havnt gotten the second hard drive just yet, but when i do i plan on doing some benchmarks to record the difference it made.
Oh and by the way, it only takes about 2-3 minutes to do the full swap, so if i ever need to take it in to Apple, its not all that big of an inconvenience. And another thing, i wanted to minimize the vibration of the hard drive, so i used some soft rubber and taped it in between the tray and the posts to minimize it, and i dont know if it made a difference or not, but i cant feel the second hard drive any more than the apple one. And another thing, it fits, but just barely, all the panels are still perfectly aligned. Oh and one more critical thing to think about, the hard drive fits, but when u add the standard sata cables, it becomes a very close fit. I had to carefully bend the sata cable as far as it would go in order for it to fit.
