Early 2011 Optibay won't mount HDD

[whYTeeVR6]

So, I've been trying to move my WD Scorpio Blue 1TB HDD into an optibay (in an early '11 i5 mbp8,1 running Snow Leopard 10.6.8). The HDD fit perfect, but when trying to.. well, do anything with it, Disk Utility fails to partition/erase/repair it, and I tried using a few different terminal commands to force erase and partition it (ended with errors saying things like "couldn't unmount disk," "Input Output error," and "cannot allocate memory"). Tried a few other spare hdd's I had in external cases, but there was no difference. Can't see the hdd's in finder but disk utility at least recognized there was a drive, just couldn't do anything to it.

Also tried a samsung 830 ssd I just got - same errors. Checked and both sata ports are sata3 capable, so that shouldn't be the problem.. Having the hdd/ssd in the optibay seemed to make everything slower too, it would take at least a minute before the apple logo appeared on boot, and disk utility would hang when first starting it (sometimes wouldn't STOP hanging). Tried resetting PRAM too. Searched to no avail on this specific problem, so here we are... Any ideas??

 

[NewishMacGuy]

Two things to be aware of in your experimentation.

1. The SATA III optibay interfaces in 2011 MBPs won't run SATA III drives reliably. There is a well documented issue with RFI interference from the wifi antennae. SATA II drives should work fine.

2. Whenever you change your drive setup you should go back into preferences and make sure that the proper boot drive is selected on the Startup Disk preference pane under System. This might very well have been the issue with your slow boots.



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[whYTeeVR6]

1. The SATA III optibay interfaces in 2011 MBPs won't run SATA III drives reliably.

2. ...you should go back into preferences and make sure that the proper boot drive is selected on the Startup Disk preference.
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1. I did find that there were issues with sata3 drives in optibays, but I couldn't get multiple sata2 drives to work either, so I don't think that's the issue. My plan was to put the sata2 hdd in the optibay anyway.

2. Not as worried about the slow boot, it still booted fine (albeit slowly). And probably was just the startup disk preferences. (will check though)

Also, I did notice there was a switch of some kind on the optibay I got (generic eBay optibay, for the record). Attachment a pic of what I'm talking about, any idea what it's for? I tried switching it with each different drive installed, it didn't change anything though...

 

[Vudoo]

I have an early 2011 15" MBP with SATA 3 in both bays as well. I bought the OWC data doubler and put a WD Scorpio Blue 1TB HDD into the optibay and had no issues for almost a year now. So one suggestion is to try a different caddy in your optibay to eliminate that as a possibility of your issue.

 

[whYTeeVR6]

try a different caddy in your optibay to eliminate that as a possibility of your issue.

Not a bad idea, I've also heard the superdrive cable is a weak point, but I reinstalled the superdrive and used it to install windows via bootcamp, so I know it's fully functional still.. The weird part to me is that it makes disk utility fail to even open sometimes (pinwheel until I have to force quit), and even when I boot with the snow leopard install disk (superdrive in external case) I still couldn't even open DU...

 

[Giuly]

Your adapter is defective. Return it and get an OWC Data Doubler.

 

[mbpjedi]

Two things to be aware of in your experimentation.

1. The SATA III optibay interfaces in 2011 MBPs won't run SATA III drives reliably. There is a well documented issue with RFI interference from the wifi antennae. SATA II drives should work fine.

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It looks like MCE may have solved this SATA-III issue in 2011 MBPs with something they're calling the OptiBay Extreme?

http://store.mcetech.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=OBSXGB-XTRM

Anyone tried this thing yet and any luck?