Late MBP 2011 15" Optical bay hd replacement help

[teigas]

I am going to help a friend upgrading his macbook pro 15" late 2011 later today. I have helped a friend before, but its a long time ago, so would just refresh my memory a litle.

1. Do i need to take out the power connector to the motherboard? Read that you had to, and somplace that you not had to.

2. The plan is to install a samsung ssd disk and keep the old disk inside also. I read when I searched the forum that not all late 2011 worked with ssd in the optical bay? It could be a nightmare or slow? So will it be best to just keep the opictal bay inside? If it works great with two disks is it best to put the sdd disk in the main bay? Or in the optical bay?

3. Is there any step by step with pictures on this forum for replacing the opictal bay ? I found one, but there where a lot of small cables to relese? And some people said they just skipped them? Thinking about the speaker cables, and antenna cables, and how fragile are theese? I dont want to mess up is mac, so if its a high risk in removing theese cables, I think i will just go with replacing the main hd bay wich i have done before for another friend. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Dual+Hard+Drive/13787

4. Last question is, if he wants to begin fresh what is the best way to do that? I guess if the old main disk is inside it will but from that? I am not a mac guy, so not sure how this would work?

Hope to get som tips in the right direction, thanks!

 

[Dadioh]

I am going to help a friend upgrading his macbook pro 15" late 2011 later today. I have helped a friend before, but its a long time ago, so would just refresh my memory a litle.

1. Do i need to take out the power connector to the motherboard? Read that you had to, and somplace that you not had to.

2. The plan is to install a samsung ssd disk and keep the old disk inside also. I read when I searched the forum that not all late 2011 worked with ssd in the optical bay? It could be a nightmare or slow? So will it be best to just keep the opictal bay inside? If it works great with two disks is it best to put the sdd disk in the main bay? Or in the optical bay?

3. Is there any step by step with pictures on this forum for replacing the opictal bay ? I found one, but there where a lot of small cables to relese? And some people said they just skipped them? Thinking about the speaker cables, and antenna cables, and how fragile are theese? I dont want to mess up is mac, so if its a high risk in removing theese cables, I think i will just go with replacing the main hd bay wich i have done before for another friend. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Dual+Hard+Drive/13787

4. Last question is, if he wants to begin fresh what is the best way to do that? I guess if the old main disk is inside it will but from that? I am not a mac guy, so not sure how this would work?

Hope to get som tips in the right direction, thanks!

1. It is really easy to just disconnect the battery connector so I wouldn't take a chance. Working over a powered logic board is not worth the chance. There is 3.4V present in certain spots at all times.

2. The ODD SATA is spotty with SATA 3 speeds. Some SATA 3 devices will negotiate all the way down to SATA 1. Put the SSD in the main HDD spot and the disk in the caddy.

3. The cables that you need to disconnect are the HDD SATA, ODD SATA, WIFI/BT, and Camera. Remove the 2 screws holding down the bracket over the hinge and the one screw at other end of that bracket. You don't need to remove all the antenna cables. You can carefully slide the bracket over to expose the ODD screw below it.

4. I would install fresh OS X directly onto the SSD from scratch. Then, if required, use migration assistant to copy across apps, user documents and settings from the old drive. Once you have everything off the old drive then format it as a fresh blank disk to use as required.

5. You didn't have a question 5 but I would suggest keeping the SSD and HDD as separate volumes. It is possible to knit them together in a Fusion drive but you end up doubling the failure rate of the volume. If either fails you can't retrieve the info from the other. Of course, a good time machine backup gets your data back after replacing the faulty drive but I just find it to be more hassle than it is worth, particularly with big SSD's being so cheap nowadays.

6. Good Luck

 

[teigas]

Thank you for the reply. When i boot it up, will i have option to format the old disk ? And install it on the ssd? Or do I need to format the old disk before startin up?

 

[tubeexperience]

Follow the ifixit instruction. Move the hard drive to the optical bay and install the SSD in the main

 

[teigas]

Thank you for all the help. Its up and running. Old hd in the optical bay, new samsung ssd in the main bay and new 16gb ram