Hard Drive type for MCE Optibay

[AreYouAMac]

Hi guys,

I was interested in replacing my SuperDrive with a second hard drive. But, I don't know what type of hard drive to purchase....ATA or SATA. So, if anyone had purchase the MCE Optibay for their macbook or macbook pro, can you please give a review of it and what type of hard drive it takes (ATA or SATA)?

Thank you.

If anyone is interested in what I am talking about, here is their website.

http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

 

[crzdmniac]

It says under the requirements what it needs.... 2.5mm IDE in this case.

 

[darwinian]

Not a SATA drive, unfortunately. Though I don't know anything about the connection that they use, so it's difficult to determine what the performance of such a drive might be. Other specs they list are

9.5 mm height, 2.5" (primarily laptop) HDD.

 

[makina670]

Optibay warning

Just by way of a warning to anyone thinking about getting an Optibay drive from MCE: it will disable Apple's DVD Player application.

That's not the end of the world - you can download an app such as VLC to do the job instead, but nonetheless it came as an unpleasant surprise to find out that I needed a third party app to use the external DVD drive I bought after I had the Optibay hard drive installed. Software and music CDs, of course, are no problem.

MCE tech support told me that this was a known issue, yet it's not mentioned anywhere that I can see on MCE's website. This is pretty poor, I think. I probably would still have bought the Optibay drive had I known in advance that I needed to find a workaround for viewing DVDs, but I think it's sufficiently significant that customers should be informed in advance.

 

[panzer06]

Hi guys,

I was interested in replacing my SuperDrive with a second hard drive. But, I don't know what type of hard drive to purchase....ATA or SATA. So, if anyone had purchase the MCE Optibay for their macbook or macbook pro, can you please give a review of it and what type of hard drive it takes (ATA or SATA)?

Thank you.

If anyone is interested in what I am talking about, here is their website.

http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

They make 2 types one for ATA and one for SATA

Cheers,

 

[brdnboy]

They make 2 types one for ATA and one for SATA

Cheers,

Does anyone know if you can use the factory sata connector along with the optibay sata connector? Does the macbook (pro) support dual sata drives?

 

[panzer06]

Does anyone know if you can use the factory sata connector along with the optibay sata connector? Does the macbook (pro) support dual sata drives?

It uses the IDE connector for the DVD drive. The ability to use SATA disks in the bay is based on the ciruitry in the bay. People already use this device with no impact on the primary system drive.

Cheers,

 

[bergui45]

S_ATA Optibay versus P_ATA

Does anyone know if you can use the factory sata connector along with the optibay sata connector? Does the macbook (pro) support dual sata drives?

Since the Superdrive connector is IDE/P_ATA, The "new" Optibay S_ATA lets yu reuse the original S_ATA HD of the MacBook Pro...
I unfortunately received the old P_ATA Optibay ordered last april 08 and had to buy another P_ATA HD + an external 2,5" external SATA enclosure to reuse the removed internal HD...
;-(
Is anybody able to say if an S_ATA secund Drive within the "new" S_ATA Optibay will perform any faster than a P_ATA one?
You must be aware that the screws that secure the Superdrive onto the motherboard will not match the Optibay: there is a real issue to secure the P_ATA Optibay onto the motherboard: should you let it mounted loose, when moving the MacBook Pro it may happen that your new HD may simply vanish away!
I had to open the MacBook Pro about 5 times before having it fixed using double sided tape and wax earplug to firmly secure the Optibay!
MCE they are 100% helpless: they never answered my emails asking for help to fix that mess: unable to secure the Optibay with the screws that fixed the Superdrive onto the motherboard.
Maybe the new Optibay has now the same matching holes that used the Superdrive to be secured onto the motherboard!