MacBook Pro and SanDisk SSD in Optical Drive Bay

[lnaltu]

Hey there,

I'm having a bit of trouble with upgrading my 15'' early 2011 MacBook Pro: I've removed the optical drive and installed a SanDisk SSD in it's place (with an adapter case). I want to have OS X running on the SSD and use the old HDD that is also installed in the machine as file storage. I've tried installing OS X, but keep getting issues like "target disk seems to be invalid", and if I retry the install my SSD may disappear from the list of available drives (even after exiting the installer and restarting). It then reapers randomly.

What I'd like to know is if this can have anything to do with it being in the optical drive slot. I've read somewhere that it sometimes doesn't work properly. Are there any chances I can just swap them out if this is the case, or will the drives most likely not fit in each others spots. I've also stumbled on something regarding TRIM, is this something I should look into?

Thanks in advance for the help!

Greetings from Madrid!

Alex

 

[Fishrrman]

My thoughts:

1. Take the SSD OUT for now. Leave the internal HDD "in place" for the moment.
2. Put the SSD into an external enclosure or USB3/SATA dock (or adapter).
3. Try installing a copy of the OS onto the SSD now. Any better?
4. Next, before you do anything else, do a "test boot" while the SSD is still external. Reboot and hold down the option continuously until the startup manager appears. Select the externally-mounted SSD with the pointer and hit return. Do you get a good boot?
5. If so, do the rest of your setup on the SSD. Get your software up to date, your accounts in order, and your apps and data files installed. Get all this done with the SSD "external".
6. Now that you KNOW the SSD is bootable and prepped, it's time to do "drive surgery".

HOWEVER --

THIS TIME, take the HDD out of its original position.
Put the SSD in its place.
Put the HDD into optical bay.
Close up and try to boot now.
How do things go?

 

[jorgk]

Hey there,

I'm having a bit of trouble with upgrading my 15'' early 2011 MacBook Pro: I've removed the optical drive and installed a SanDisk SSD in it's place (with an adapter case). I want to have OS X running on the SSD and use the old HDD that is also installed in the machine as file storage. I've tried installing OS X, but keep getting issues like "target disk seems to be invalid", and if I retry the install my SSD may disappear from the list of available drives (even after exiting the installer and restarting). It then reapers randomly.

What I'd like to know is if this can have anything to do with it being in the optical drive slot. I've read somewhere that it sometimes doesn't work properly. Are there any chances I can just swap them out if this is the case, or will the drives most likely not fit in each others spots. I've also stumbled on something regarding TRIM, is this something I should look into?

Thanks in advance for the help!

Greetings from Madrid!

Alex

For the SSD in the optical drive slot see this thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1584023/

I think there's two adapter cases I know of that are supposed to work SATA-III in the optical drive slot of early/late-15/17"-2011-MBPs, an MCE extreme (something like that) and one (Sata-III) from Hardwrk.

Otherwise, switch positions of the HDD (likely being SATA-II) and SSD.
Or go for some manual adventure (see referenced in here: https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18549745/)