Last MBP with 2.5" drive?

[Dopeyman]

What's the last MBP model that had a 2.5" drive and not the SSD blades? Also, does it have the optical drive that can be replaced with another 2.5" drive?

Or is there a MBP that had the SSD blades and an optical drive that can be replaced with a 2.5" drive?

So basically the last model that can have either 2 drives or a blade and a drive

 

[Mike Boreham]

Non Retina Mid 2012. Yes, this has optical drive that can be replaced by SSD, but research risk of putting 6G/SATA3 devices in the optical bay.

No MBPs have SSD blades and optical drives.

 

[treekram]

OWC has a warning about getting SATA3 speeds with the optical connection in the 2012 non-Retina MBP. This warning was not always there and I don't know what prompted them to add it (the 2011 MBP has known issues). I have a SSD connected to the optical on my 2012 MBP without problems. I have not seen anybody on this forum who has had problems on the 2012 MBP optical. Putting a regular SATA drive on the optical requires a bracket. If you look at reviews in sites like Amazon for the OWC "Data Doubler" (bracket), maybe you can find people who have had problems with the optical connector. For the cheapest brackets, there may be issues with the connector (it has electronics and is not a simple connector) with individual units so reviews for those units cannot be taken as an indicator for how the optical connection works in general.

 

[Mike Boreham]

The problems were mainly with 2011 MBPs but some 2012 were affected particularly 15" and 17". It wasn't a matter of not achieving SATA3 speeds, more a case of instability and erratic behaviour which could include the drive in the optical not being seen at all. It was very variable between machines, a few reporting no problem at all. Here are some threads with more discussion:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/optibay-extreme.1742169/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1tb-hdd-early-2011-macbook-pro.1584023/

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-macbook-13-early-2011.2107295/#post-25841371

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-pro-issue-please-help.1762845/#post-19459291

 

[treekram]

The problems were mainly with 2011 MBPs but some 2012 were affected particularly 15" and 17". It wasn't a matter of not achieving SATA3 speeds, more a case of instability and erratic behaviour which could include the drive in the optical not being seen at all. It was very variable between machines, a few reporting no problem at all. Here are some threads with more discussion:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/optibay-extreme.1742169/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1tb-hdd-early-2011-macbook-pro.1584023/

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-macbook-13-early-2011.2107295/#post-25841371

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-pro-issue-please-help.1762845/#post-19459291

Thanks, Mike, for pointing these threads out. With regards to the 20102 MBP, I see there's a problem with a Toshiba 1TB HDD model and a Hitachi 1TB model and one poster who said another 1TB HDD they tried in the optical slot had issues but another HDD in the optical slot worked fine. It would have been interesting to see if that last problem HDD would have worked in the HDD slot but the poster apparently didn't try that. One poster with the Hitachi 1TB model did try it in both slots and it worked in the HDD slot but not in the optical slot.

In looking at the Wayback Machine archive, the OWC site was changed sometime between May 31, 2017 and August 14, 2017 to add the 2012 MBP to their Data Doubler warning.

Unlike the 2011 MBP, I would say the 2012's mostly work but beware cheap brackets and 1TB HDD's (newer the better?).

 

[Mike Boreham]

Thanks, Mike, for pointing these threads out. With regards to the 20102 MBP, I see there's a problem with a Toshiba 1TB HDD model and a Hitachi 1TB model and one poster who said another 1TB HDD they tried in the optical slot had issues but another HDD in the optical slot worked fine. It would have been interesting to see if that last problem HDD would have worked in the HDD slot but the poster apparently didn't try that. One poster with the Hitachi 1TB model did try it in both slots and it worked in the HDD slot but not in the optical slot.

In looking at the Wayback Machine archive, the OWC site was changed sometime between May 31, 2017 and August 14, 2017 to add the 2012 MBP to their Data Doubler warning.

Unlike the 2011 MBP, I would say the 2012's mostly work but beware cheap brackets and 1TB HDD's (newer the better?).

I don't believe the issue was about particular brands of HDD or SSD, but about whether the drive was SATA2 or SATA3 (3G or 6G). The cause is variability of shielding of the SATA connection to the optical bay. All MBPs were OK with the SATA1.5 optical drive they were designed for, but not for SATA3. I had two 2011 MBPs which were very different from each other. Both were fine with SATA2 drives.

I didn't realise OWC had actually edited their article as recently as 2017, although I always thought that the 2012 were not completely in the clear. Interesting.

 

[Dopeyman]

Thank you gentlemen for all this useful information!!!

 

[duervo]

I have a 500GB Patriot Spark SSD in the HDD slot, and an HGST 1TB HDD in the optical bay. Both are connected at SATA3 speeds, with none of this SATA2 business being spoken about here. If OWC is claiming there are SATA3 problems using the optical drive connection, then I would suspect that they are referring to just their own products, and not all products.

I’m just using a $10 optibay thing I got off some random eBay seller in China. Took 2 months to arrive, but it’s been working for just over 5 years so far, and counting, in my mid2012 15” MBP.

 

[Mike Boreham]

I have a 500GB Patriot Spark SSD in the HDD slot, and an HGST 1TB HDD in the optical bay. Both are connected at SATA3 speeds, with none of this SATA2 business being spoken about here. If OWC is claiming there are SATA3 problems using the optical drive connection, then I would suspect that they are referring to just their own products, and not all products.

I’m just using a $10 optibay thing I got off some random eBay seller in China. Took 2 months to arrive, but it’s been working for just over 5 years so far, and counting, in my mid2012 15” MBP.

It is not just an OWC thing. There are no electronics in the adapters just a frame and connectors. As I said it is a very variable situation. 2012 was better than 2011, so maybe you got lucky.

Note that System Report will always say it is connected by SATA3 in the optical bay (unless the MBP is one of the few early 2011 ones which were actually SATA2) but this is not a guarantee that it is working correctly. At one time one of my 17" 2011 MBPs had a SATA3/6G SSD in the optical bay and it appeared to be fine, but DriveDx showed that it was accumulating thousands of UDMA CRC errors (where error detection causes the data to be retransmitted, all invisible to the user). I ended up putting a 1TB HGST HDD in the optical bay. It was not happy as an SATA3 device, but I used HGST tools to reset it to SATA2. AFAIK only HGST provide this capability.

Also note that SATA2 bandwidth is more than enough for any HDD, so there is no speed penalty for downgrading to SATA2.