MBP Mid-2009: Best way to upgrade to Dual HD?

[Dragula22]

I took the mac plunge this past week and so far I'm loving OS X.

I would eventually like to upgrade the stock 250gb to a 640gb, and install the kingston 40gb ssd drive into an optibay as the dedicated boot/app drive.

First, for a dual ssd/hdd system, putting the ssd in the optibay is the correct strategy right? What is the best way to attempt this switch?

If I replace both drives at once, I'm screwed because I need the optical drive to install os x, correct? So should I install a OS onto the 640 first, and then install the ssd? I'm also relatively new to time machine, so I'm not sure what its capabilities are--will i be able to only back up my applications? In the end, I'd like to be able to boot from the ssd and store videos/pics/etc in the HD.

Thanks for any help.

 

[PJALM]

Ok I hope this helps...

Goto the following link and get the kit to fit your Macbook (probably the unibody)
DualDrive for Macbook

Put the SSD in the DualDrive, this allows for up to a 750GB HDD in the HDD bay.

You can optionally get the external case to put your current optical drive into after you remove it, then you can use it to install software like Snow Leopard.
External enclosure for SuperDrive

I currently use this setup with the Samsung 256GB SSD in the optibay and a Seagate 500GB 7200 RPM drive in the HDD bay and it works great. You could also save some money and use 2x 500GB 7200RPM HDDs and use the Apple SoftRAID to double your performance. I used this method untill i could afford to get the SSD and it was fast.

As for Time Machine, it will backup everything OS and all. If Something goes wrong you can restore your entire drive by booting the OS X CD and choosing to restore from a Time Machine drive.

 

[MacModMachine]

i have a massive thread about this

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/680228/

explains just about everything you would need to know about running dual harddrives in striped , or single drive config's.