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Does currently shipping 15" Macbook Pro support SATA III @ 6Gb/s in Optibay? Post a P


  • Total voters
    12
  • Poll closed .
You know even if it was SATA3 there is no optibay on the market that support sata3. Thus making it completely useless.


Thats the reason why I have a M4 in the HDD bay and a WD HDD in the optibay. Never had a problem with reliability when it comes to the HDD and I am enjoying SATA3 speeds of the M4.
 
I have 2 SSD's. The apple one that came with my early 2011 MBP, and an Intel 320 series 120GB Sata II in the optical bay.

I look at it like this, even if it does support it, SATA III is too unreliable right now. do you really need 6GB/S? I know it would be nice to have of course but if it's faulty why not go with the SATA II?

just my opinion, but I do not transfer massive amounts of data on a laptop. So if you do you may not agree and feel the need for 6gb/s
 
Doesn't really work

I just installed an m4 into the optibay of my late 2011 15" MBP. The system information says it's running at 6Gb/s, so from that aspect it works. However, when I boot off of it the entire OS become unresponsive for about 5 seconds every 15 seconds or so (rough estimates, I haven't actually tried timing it), which makes it pretty much unusable. I'm going to try swapping it to the main bay tonight to see if that fixes this problem.

Edit: I was seeing this after yesterday's EFI update, so that update didn't fix the problem.
 
This is interesting....I'm going to check mine...It was purchased from Apple I think last August...It replaced my old MBP....Curiosity really...But I'm going to check...:)

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Yep...Although it's an early 2011 model. Good to know
 
So even though the device list as 6 Gb/sec it is only working with 3 Gb/sec hardware?
 

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I just installed an m4 into the optibay of my late 2011 15" MBP. The system information says it's running at 6Gb/s, so from that aspect it works. However, when I boot off of it the entire OS become unresponsive for about 5 seconds every 15 seconds or so (rough estimates, I haven't actually tried timing it), which makes it pretty much unusable. I'm going to try swapping it to the main bay tonight to see if that fixes this problem.

Edit: I was seeing this after yesterday's EFI update, so that update didn't fix the problem.

6Gb/s drives do not run stable in the optibay at 6Gb/s. There is an article about that on the OWC blog.
They do run stable at the 13" MBP though, but not on the 15" and the 17". Put the SSD in the main HDD bay and you'll be fine.

Here the link to the article:http://blog.macsales.com/12410-apple’s-latest-2011-macbook-pro-refresh-using-sata-3-0-6gbs-drives
 
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Why is this a poll? Does technology now work on a crowd-sourcing model instead of the laws of physics?

Listen to the man from OWC.
 
6Gb/s drives do not run stable in the optibay at 6Gb/s. There is an article about that on the OWC blog.
They do run stable at the 13" MBP though, but not on the 15" and the 17". Put the SSD in the main HDD bay and you'll be fine.

Here the link to the article:http://blog.macsales.com/12410-apple’s-latest-2011-macbook-pro-refresh-using-sata-3-0-6gbs-drives


I thought that was fixed a long time ago. My 15" early 11 only has sata II in the optical drive. I am putting a 2nd M4 in there. Should I be ok since it will only give me Sata II speeds even though it's a sata III SSD?
Is there any way to join the 2 drives together so the OS sees them as one drive?
 
2c: even if it doesn't run at 6gig in the opti bay, its still going to be a damn sight faster than any hard drive even at 3 gigabit.

sure, your sequential read throughput might be clipped at 300 megs/sec, but your random io (more important for multitasking) won't be, and you'll still have the motion sensor for your hard drive. Sequential WRITE wise, I've not seen any drives out there that will saturate 300 megs/sec anyhow.

imho - when i upgrade, i'm sticking the drive in the optibay whether its supported at 6gig on my MBP or not....

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Is there any way to join the 2 drives together so the OS sees them as one drive?


RAID will do it, assuming both are the same size.

You have 2 choices: RAID1 or RAID0.

RAID1 = half the capacity (each drive is a mirror). Kinda pointless on a laptop really - all your new drive will give you is a hot spare copy of the data, no additional capacity.

RAID0 = data split between the two drives. Which is twice as fast (the machine reads/writes to both drives at the same time, half of everything comes off each drive), but if one fails you lose everything. Take backups!
 
I am running SATA III 6Gb speeds in the optical bay of my 17" late 2011 Macbook Pro

6Gb/s drives do not run stable in the optibay at 6Gb/s. There is an article about that on the OWC blog.
They do run stable at the 13" MBP though, but not on the 15" and the 17". Put the SSD in the main HDD bay and you'll be fine.

Here the link to the article:http://blog.macsales.com/12410-apple’s-latest-2011-macbook-pro-refresh-using-sata-3-0-6gbs-drives


With my mod, I am running SATA III 6Gb speeds in the optical bay of my 17" late 2011 Macbook Pro. See the proof: https://sites.google.com/site/themacbookproproject/

You will need a saw, soldering iron and some skill.
 
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