General OPTIBAY discussion

[iMackPro]

i know ive posted a lot of threads tonight but im just in a good mood to learn some stuff about my mac

Can someone that has an Optibay tell me how it affects your battery life?
Is it a pretty big increase, and since its in a different location on the computer does OS X have the ability to put it to sleep when its not in use? since it'd be my secondary drive it'd only be using it to watch movies, literally everything else is on my apple 128 SSD the only thing going on this HDD would be movies and my iPhone back ups, maybe. If i can put the drive to sleep and theres not a big impact id definitely be considering it. I was was hesitant to get rid of my ODD but now i think its well worth it. i see lots of people are choosing this route and now im beginning to see the reason why! its just so dam convenient!!!

Now if i do go the Optibay route can i still connect my ODD to my computer via usb or is it garbo and an i have to buy an external Mac Superdrive? that would be very disappointing

 

[iMackPro]

For anyone else interested in Optibay...

http://www.macworld.com/article/58673/2007/06/optibay.html

that linked helped me out a lot..

looks like ill be going down to 2:30 minutes if i had the drives mirrored in RAID.
id like to mirror them but then not use the other drive after the initial back up until im ready to download movies and store them on that drive, play them and then keep that drive as sleepy as possible (doesn't sound right but im trying to say keeping it idle)

Another factor was heat.. although it only raises the temps around 5-7 degrees F. Not a bid deal to me, ill be making my mac hot while im watching Blu ray movies anyways, and this thing wont ever be on my lap while watching movies. maybe on a plane but then im not worried.

EDIT: looks like those battery times where while both HD's were reading and writing at the same time, so i STILL don't know what it'll do to my battery for the use ill be performing on it. hopefully a IDLE HDD wont do much damage, as i use this everyday in class, my max is 4 classes a day, as long as i am above the 4 hour mark im A okay and will be going this route! as long as i don't hear any horror stories!



Has anyone gone the OB route and regretted it? Why?

 

[rmitchell248]

if you mirror the drive it is just that a perfect mirror of your boot drive. You will see that with what you want a mirror is not what you want

The mirror RAID means a couple things

1. The optibay drive will not go to sleep as any data that is being written to the main boot drive will also be written to that drive.

2. you will not be able to put movies on that optibay mirror drive separately as the mirror will limit the capacity to that of the smallest drive in the pair. If they are a mirror, your OS or Finder if you will, will only show one drive which is the mirrored set. You will be limited to the size of the boot SSD in the mirror wasting the extra space in your optibay drive.

The only other option you would have is to partition the optibay drive into 2 segments. the first being the same size as your SSD boot drive and the second would be the remaining balance of space on the HDD.

You would then go and Mirror the SSD and the small partition of the optibay drive. This would make those two show up as one drive in your finder and the second drive would be the remaining space on the HDD in the optibay.

This gives you the mirror of the SSD and a separate drive for all of your movies. The problem is that the optibay disc will not 'sleep' as long as you have the computer running anything at all since it is a mirror of the SSD.

I hope that makes sense

 

[k43l]

I have an SSD + HDD in optibay setup. I haven't noticed a big difference in terms of battery life.

But since I only have my music and movies on the HDD, I can unmount it if I don't need it. According to Mac OS, the battery should last between 30 minutes and 1 hour longer running on the SSD only.

 

[iMackPro]

if you mirror the drive it is just that a perfect mirror of your boot drive. You will see that with what you want a mirror is not what you want

The mirror RAID means a couple things

1. The optibay drive will not go to sleep as any data that is being written to the main boot drive will also be written to that drive.

2. you will not be able to put movies on that optibay mirror drive separately as the mirror will limit the capacity to that of the smallest drive in the pair. If they are a mirror, your OS or Finder if you will, will only show one drive which is the mirrored set. You will be limited to the size of the boot SSD in the mirror wasting the extra space in your optibay drive.

The only other option you would have is to partition the optibay drive into 2 segments. the first being the same size as your SSD boot drive and the second would be the remaining balance of space on the HDD.

You would then go and Mirror the SSD and the small partition of the optibay drive. This would make those two show up as one drive in your finder and the second drive would be the remaining space on the HDD in the optibay.

This gives you the mirror of the SSD and a separate drive for all of your movies. The problem is that the optibay disc will not 'sleep' as long as you have the computer running anything at all since it is a mirror of the SSD.

I hope that makes sense

so my best option is to just copy all of my information from the SSD to the optibay then unink them or unmirrior them? is that possible? to mirror them at first just to make thing EVERYTHING gets moved over then unmirror (for lack of a better or correct word) them so i can just store my movies on it once it has a copy of my boot drive?

also if they are not mirrored is there something i can do make sure my optibay drive is not running or "alive" sort of speek to save battery? ill only be downloading movies and playing them on the Optibay, nothing else, so i only need it "alive" once a night and such, never all the time.

 

[iMackPro]

I have an SSD + HDD in optibay setup. I haven't noticed a big difference in terms of battery life.

But since I only have my music and movies on the HDD, I can unmount it if I don't need it. According to Mac OS, the battery should last between 30 minutes and 1 hour longer running on the SSD only.

would you mind telling me which HDD you bought for Optibay? do you like/regret it? if you could have another drive which would you choose? would you mind telling me a few of the higher-end 1 TB drives that would fit in the Optibay?