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MacBook motion sensor crash with SSD?

I

InfiniteLoopy

Cancelled
Original poster
Dec 14, 2010
366
5
I have a MacBook with a Crucial SSD in the HD bay and a HD in the optical bay. It seems that the MacBook now crashes if moved quickly. Could this have anything to do with the motion sensors? Is there anything I can do to solve this?
Thanks
 
InfiniteLoopy said:
I have a MacBook with a Crucial SSD in the HD bay and a HD in the optical bay. It seems that the MacBook now crashes if moved quickly. Could this have anything to do with the motion sensors? Is there anything I can do to solve this?
Thanks
Click to expand...

You say you have a HDD in the optical bay. Check the caddy holding the HDD in the optical bay has not become loose and that the connectors for the HDD are tight. Check the SSD fitting too. it's unlikely to be a problem with the motion sensor.
 
If I remember there is no motion sensor on the optical drive port so unless the HDD has a built-in motion sensor that drive is shaking around while spinning.

It's been a while since I've had a 2008 Alu MacBook, but the preferred positioning was HDD in the HD bay and SSD in the optical bay.
 
Thanks for your replies.

Mac.User said:
If I remember there is no motion sensor on the optical drive port so unless the HDD has a built-in motion sensor that drive is shaking around while spinning.

It's been a while since I've had a 2008 Alu MacBook, but the preferred positioning was HDD in the HD bay and SSD in the optical bay.
Click to expand...

I thought the preferred option was the opposite as the SSD holds the OS and apps, and therefore is in the place of the original HDD. Is this not right?
 
InfiniteLoopy said:
Thanks for your replies.



I thought the preferred option was the opposite as the SSD holds the OS and apps, and therefore is in the place of the original HDD. Is this not right?
Click to expand...

With the older MacBooks the optical bay was sata 1 so placing the hdd in there was the better option as the hdd bay offered sata 2 speeds. Newer MacBooks differ from this offering the same speed regardless.
 
Thanks.
Mine is several years old and runs the slower Sata (3Gb/s I think). Should I still switch them and put the SSD in the optibay?

Thanks
 
Always put the HDD in the HDD bay and the SSD in the optical bay. The only way the SMS (Sudden Motion Sensor) will work is in the HDD bay, as far as I know it will not activate in the optical bay, but rather will freeze your SSD when bumped.

If you just have an SSD it can also be disabled entirely to prevent freezing.

I personally have a SATA 2 SSD in the optical bay running at SATA 2 speeds, and same story with my HDD. As seen here:
jjIzm9Z.png

t2SUOry.jpg


However, if your SSD is SATA 3 it will revert to SATA 1, but the HDD will be much safer and you shouldn't have any freezing issues. That being said, SATA 1 is still perfectly fine for an SSD, I've got one in a 2007 MBP and it still flies.
 
BrettApple said:
Always put the HDD in the HDD bay and the SSD in the optical bay. The only way the SMS (Sudden Motion Sensor) will work is in the HDD bay, as far as I know it will not activate in the optical bay, but rather will freeze your SSD when bumped.

If you just have an SSD it can also be disabled entirely to prevent freezing.

I personally have a SATA 2 SSD in the optical bay running at SATA 2 speeds, and same story with my HDD. As seen here:
Image
Image

However, if your SSD is SATA 3 it will revert to SATA 1, but the HDD will be much safer and you shouldn't have any freezing issues. That being said, SATA 1 is still perfectly fine for an SSD, I've got one in a 2007 MBP and it still flies.
Click to expand...

Your crazy losing performance when you could swap the drives disable the SMS and buy a cheap mechanical drive with inbuilt motion detection!

This is what I personally did and it works like a charm
 
Gav2k said:
Your crazy losing performance when you could swap the drives disable the SMS and buy a cheap mechanical drive with inbuilt motion detection!

This is what I personally did and it works like a charm
Click to expand...

I am not loosing any performance :cool:. Both drives are working at the fastest the MacBook can support, SATAII 3.0 Gbit/s. The SMS doesn't bother my SSD, but works on my HDD when it needs to.

I would rather not buy a "cheap mechanical drive", because I really like my WD Black since it's very fast. I can read and write around 100 MB/s and I keep my Aperture library on it and frequently edit very large RAW photos, so lots of storage and speed is key. Where the SSD usually gets around 200 MB/s speeds.

Also for heat and vibration dampening it is advantageous to have the HDD where it belongs, with the rubber mounting brackets and less drive heat under the keyboard. The thermal sensors in my drives show the HDD at around 80°F where my SSD is at 85°F due to it being closer the the CPU and heatsink. So if the mechanical drive is in there you can expect more heat.

I originally had a 500GB 7200RPM drive in the optical bay because the screws that came with my Data Doubler didn't fit the SSD quite right, but then soon after the drive failed and when I got my new one I swapped them out and found some washers to put between the SSD and data doubler. It did run warmer too. Usually around 100 if I remember right.
 
Apologies mate I'm mobile so your spec wasn't showing. I chose to go with a nice slow mech drive to cut the heat down. Seems to work peachy
 
It's all good, I'm not the best morning person and hadn't had breakfast :eek:
Sorry to sound so condescending, my bad.

To the OP, it sounds like if you don't want to swap the drives around, you could get away with just disabling the SMS by typing "sudo pmset -a sms 0" into Terminal. Just try not to bump it for the HDD's sake, or you could spin it down when not in use.
 
BrettApple said:
To the OP, it sounds like if you don't want to swap the drives around, you could get away with just disabling the SMS by typing "sudo pmset -a sms 0" into Terminal. Just try not to bump it for the HDD's sake, or you could spin it down when not in use.
Click to expand...


Thanks for the detailed replies. I'm amazed that I've been running since Lion was released with the wrong setup. I could have sworn that that was what was recommended at the time. If I remember correctly, it had something to do with hibernation or sleep mode or something. Also, my crashes seemed to happen when I was doing stuff that was "only" using the SSD like Safari browsing.

Anyway, I don't have an issue swapping the drives around. I'll wait until Mavericks is released and then do so. Just to be clear, all I need to do is swap the drives (meaning SSD in optibay and HDD in HDD location)?

I may even try a home-made fusion drive. :rolleyes:

Thanks
 
InfiniteLoopy said:
I may even try a home-made fusion drive. :rolleyes:

Thanks
Click to expand...

What about a RAID0 with 2 SSDs? I'm thinking seriously about it since 500GB drives are more expensive than two SSDs. If I'm not wrong, OWC already made this test and gains are marginal, but at least you can see two smaller drives as a big one.
 
brdeveloper said:
What about a RAID0 with 2 SSDs? I'm thinking seriously about it since 500GB drives are more expensive than two SSDs. If I'm not wrong, OWC already made this test and gains are marginal, but at least you can see two smaller drives as a big one.
Click to expand...

Are you sure they're more expensive? They seem about the same on average.

If I was to do a Fusion Drive, are there any downsides with regard to reliability or battery?
 
InfiniteLoopy said:
Are you sure they're more expensive? They seem about the same on average.

If I was to do a Fusion Drive, are there any downsides with regard to reliability or battery?
Click to expand...

Sorry, I didn't explain well. I live in Brazil, so prices vary more in higher-end products. In respect to fusion drive, I'd expect that the increment on battery usage would be marginal, since the most tasks would occur only in the SSD. This would not be the case in the "non-fusion" approach. If you install an HDD as a second storage unit without "fusioning" with the SSD, you'll get the hard drive wakening up whenever you open Finder or load a just listened mp3 file.

Currently, I think it's better keeping a single storage unit in my Macbook (unless it was the SSD-RAID0 approach) because I don't want upgrading to Mountain Lion to get the Fusion support. I like the smoothness of Snow Leopard and since most apps still run on it, I don't feel I'm losing too much without getting the latest OSX.
 
brdeveloper said:
Sorry, I didn't explain well. I live in Brazil, so prices vary more in higher-end products. In respect to fusion drive, I'd expect that the increment on battery usage would be marginal, since the most tasks would occur only in the SSD. This would not be the case in the "non-fusion" approach. If you install an HDD as a second storage unit without "fusioning" with the SSD, you'll get the hard drive wakening up whenever you open Finder or load a just listened mp3 file.

Currently, I think it's better keeping a single storage unit in my Macbook (unless it was the SSD-RAID0 approach) because I don't want upgrading to Mountain Lion to get the Fusion support. I like the smoothness of Snow Leopard and since most apps still run on it, I don't feel I'm losing too much without getting the latest OSX.
Click to expand...

Thanks.
So I think I'll be switching the drives around (SSD in optibay) and creating a fusion drive when Mavericks is released.
 
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