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AlexMaximus

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Aug 15, 2006
1,286
632
A400M Base
Hi folks,

I would like know your experience regarding your "optibay swap" with those who replaced their DVD/CD Rom with a HD or SSD.

1. Did you have an instance where you regretted the swap? Do you miss the DVD Drive??

I am discussing this at the moment with my "CFO" if I should put a second SSD in my laptop.

If I would go this route I would have two options:

A) Replace the Intel SSD 300 Gig with an 512 or 600 Gig drive - keeping the CDROM. The smaller one would go into an external box or be saved for a future mac mini project.

B) Keep the the existing SSD in there and throw out the CDRom. Put the existing one in the Optibay and a newer larger SSD in the standard HDbay.

What would you do?

Would a faster Sata3 drive (Intel 520 model) be faster then my old Sata2 intel 320 model, even if I don#t have the sata3 controller in my "old" MBP ?

Thanks!!
 
Hi folks,

I would like know your experience regarding your "optibay swap" with those who replaced their DVD/CD Rom with a HD or SSD.

1. Did you have an instance where you regretted the swap? Do you miss the DVD Drive??

I only couldnt use the DVD drive *once* in the year that I've had the optibay installed and it was for an unnecessary reason (watch a dvd movie).

However, my 1TB drive installed in with the Optibay has served a fantastic purpose as I dont have the need to bring with me an external drive as I use the secondary drive for storage of all my files, projects, videos, etc. This has proven awesome on my 2 month trip to europe.
If I would go this route I would have two options:

A) Replace the Intel SSD 300 Gig with an 512 or 600 Gig drive - keeping the CDROM. The smaller one would go into an external box or be saved for a future mac mini project.

B) Keep the the existing SSD in there and throw out the CDRom. Put the existing one in the Optibay and a newer larger SSD in the standard HDbay.

What would you do?

Option C:

Use the existing drive as your primary boot drive and put in the secondary large volume SSD drive into the optibay.

Would a faster Sata3 drive (Intel 520 model) be faster then my old Sata2 intel 320 model, even if I don#t have the sata3 controller in my "old" MBP ?

No, the fastest speed youre going to get is SATA II speeds. Both the Intel 320 and Intel 520 are going to pretty much saturate SATA II speeds that you won't see any difference (may be slight, but its a waste of time investigating and testing).

I say Option C because both drives are fast and I typically recommend using the smaller drive as a boot drive to hold the OS and applications while the larger drive holds all the important files, thereby separating the two.
 
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