If I install an SSD as a 2nd drive, can I make it my boot drive?

[a random John]

I just bought a 2011 17" MacBook Pro. I have the stock 750GB drive in it. I am looking at buying a drive caddy from OWC (yes I know I can get them for $17 from Amazon, but the look like junk) and putting my Crucial C300 SSD in it.

I plan to first use SuperDuper to clone my drive onto it and then hope to use it as the system disk.

Does anybody here know how to accomplish that?

The simpler method would be to put the SSD in the hard disk bay and move the hard disk to the caddy in the super drive bay, but I've read that doing so is a bad idea due to thermal issues and less shock protection.

Is there a way to do this? Is there anything else I should watch out for?

Thanks!,
John

 

[Hellhammer]

Yes, you can boot from the SSD even if it is in the ODD bay.

 

[a random John]

Do I need to do anything to enable that? What is the process?

 

[Hellhammer]

Do I need to do anything to enable that? What is the process?

Just put OS X in the SSD and then boot from it by holding alt. No special steps required.

 

[a random John]

Excellent. Thanks for the tip.

 

[jsaenz]

Just last night I installed an OWC SSD in data doubler and I am running the OS from that drive.