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orthorim said:
newmodeus fit is indeed perfect.

I now shuffled my files and folders so that I can unmount the hard drive when not needed. That greatly enhances battery life, to the point where it's better than before the SSD install.

With full battery and HD unmounted, running off the SSD, the system showed me a remaining time of 8 hours 30 minutes this morning. Certainly a record. Once I start doing things that should then work out to 7:30 which would also be better than before.

Thanks to the poster who mentioned that trick. It turns out unmounting is the only thing that will keep the HD in idle state. Other than that, there are programs that wake all disks, including OS X's own Spotlight search which wakes the HD on ever search.
Click to expand...

Since my second drive is a backup drive, I leave it unmounted all the time now and mount it when needed. Backing up to it is also soooo much faster than it does to the firewire drive. Use to take me 4 hours on the firewire drive, now its roughly 80 minutes, not bad for PATA! :)
 
rgarjr said:
are u saying that if you unmount the HDD, it will spin down? How do you mount it back up again?
Click to expand...

I am using Disk Utility. Click "mount" to mount, and "unmount" to unmount. Pretty simple.

Thinking of automating it via shell commands / AppleScript but didn't have time to look into that yet.

My 2nd HDD is not a backup disk, it has all my large data like movies, pictures, and music on it. So when I need those, I need to mount the drive.

This morning I was showing over 9 hours remaining battery life. Not really true of course, but 6 - 7 hours has become realistic / easy without too many compromises, whereas previously it was possible but a bit of a stretch.

BTW if you are concerned about battery life quit Safari whenever you can. Safari seems to constantly use significant CPU time when any websites are open. As I am typing this it's using 10%, probably some websites showing animations etc (I have Flashblock)...
 
Disk Utility has definately found it's way to my dock and quite a hard thing for apps to do.

I'm glad the un-mounting/mounting has benefited you guys as much as it has me.

Im loving my 2 year old mac again just like it was new!
 
I cant wait to get this mod rolling. I put in the x25 e in yesterday and after a few problems got everything situated. Now I just have to decide On what HD to use for this mod to house all my movies and music. its comming down to the WD 1TB or the hitachi 7k500. Since I only have about 280 GB of movies, music and pictures I think I may go with the 7k500 and save 200 bones over the WD 1 TB.

Pics to come when its all installed.
 
Is it possible to do this:

adamk77 said:
sudo ditto -rsrc /Volumes/Users/<username> /Volumes/<path to external>

Then go into accounts, control click your username and set the user directory to the new location on the HDD.

In Finder, the default Places (Desktop, home directory, Applications, Documents, Downloads etc) will point to the user directory on the HDD.
Click to expand...

AND unmount the HDD when not using it? Im assuming if you have the HDD with the home directory unmounted it would not work.

If I can Put all that stuff (Desktop, home directory, Applications, Documents, Downloads etc)on the secondary HDD AND mount and unmount the same HDD whenever I need it that would be love.

But im assuming (Uneducatedly *yea I make up words*) That I cant unmount the drive that these systems folders are on.

Anyone shed some light?
 
mike,

i would simply change the spindown timer on the drives(ill dig up the terminal command for you),

they will spin down more frequently, causing more wear on the drives but save the most power.
 
MikeSantor said:
Is it possible to do this:



AND unmount the HDD when not using it? Im assuming if you have the HDD with the home directory unmounted it would not work.

If I can Put all that stuff (Desktop, home directory, Applications, Documents, Downloads etc)on the secondary HDD AND mount and unmount the same HDD whenever I need it that would be love.

But im assuming (Uneducatedly *yea I make up words*) That I cant unmount the drive that these systems folders are on.

Anyone shed some light?
Click to expand...

Yes you can't have your home directory on the HDD and unmount it. Even if there are no files open, and Disk Utility will allow you to unmount, you will run into trouble as soon as any program tries to access anything on there.

Since the home directory also contains preferences, that's no good.

I recommend to clean out your home directory, move all the large files to the HDD, and create a directory structure there to your liking. You can use OmniDiskSweeper or any other utility that shows directory/file sizes to help you find the big items.

Shrink the home dir until it fits on the SSD. This means you need to re-arrange your files. But since this is OS X, it's easy to do that.

I moved lots of large files out of downloads, documents and so on, and symlinked my music, movies, and pictures folders from the SSD to the HDD. Aliases might work too, not sure. I am not convinced at this point that symlink is the best option though. Just FYI.
 
I figured this would be the case. Is it possible to just Put the downloads folder on the HDD? I DL too much random **** that gets deleted half the time. I dont want to be doing that on the SSD.

I really need to go grabs some books from amazon on OS X / the file structure. I have been on Winblows too long and I hate having to rely on you guys to walk me through ****.

Thanks for all the advice guys. I really appreciate it.
 
MikeSantor said:
I figured this would be the case. Is it possible to just Put the downloads folder on the HDD? I DL too much random **** that gets deleted half the time. I dont want to be doing that on the SSD.

I really need to go grabs some books from amazon on OS X / the file structure. I have been on Winblows too long and I hate having to rely on you guys to walk me through ****.

Thanks for all the advice guys. I really appreciate it.
Click to expand...

If you want to be transparent to the rest of the system, you can create symlinks (look it up). Or you just set your downloads folder to another folder in whatever programs you use to download.

type "man pmset" to get the settings. then
Code: 
sudo pmset -a disksleep 1
to set disk sleep to 1 minute.

disksleep works reasonably well, but I was monitoring disk sleep state using the SpindownHD.app program (comes as part of the developer tools on OS X) and I found that a lot of stuff wakes the disk up. Any spotlight search. Different programs that ping all disks. And so on. In the end, unmounting the disk proved a much more efficient way of getting good battery life.
 
orthorim said:
If you want to be transparent to the rest of the system, you can create symlinks (look it up). Or you just set your downloads folder to another folder in whatever programs you use to download.

type "man pmset" to get the settings. then
Code: 
sudo pmset -a disksleep 1
to set disk sleep to 1 minute.

disksleep works reasonably well, but I was monitoring disk sleep state using the SpindownHD.app program (comes as part of the developer tools on OS X) and I found that a lot of stuff wakes the disk up. Any spotlight search. Different programs that ping all disks. And so on. In the end, unmounting the disk proved a much more efficient way of getting good battery life.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the commands. Basically I need to choose the lesser of 2 evils. Either I can Move all my files to the HDD to ensure no pointless writes to the SSD but loose battery life and generate a little more heat with the HDD always on or Keep my files on the SSD and unmount the HDD when not being used. I think im going to go with the latter. I can always image the SSD onto an external drive I have and wipe the SSD to get rid of all the garbage.
 
My SSD is pretty full, and I am getting worse data rates than what others report online. But what good is a fast disk that's not being used?

I am hoping new firmware and/or support of the TRIM command will get the maximum out of my hardware. Just going to wait until OS X supports TRIM and/or Intel re-releases the firmware update software.
 
orthorim said:
My SSD is pretty full, and I am getting worse data rates than what others report online. But what good is a fast disk that's not being used?

I am hoping new firmware and/or support of the TRIM command will get the maximum out of my hardware. Just going to wait until OS X supports TRIM and/or Intel re-releases the firmware update software.
Click to expand...

i guess i never understood why people are so horny over trim, intel has a trim like feature in the G1 ssd's , mine never slows down even in benchmarks that feature was integrated in 8820 firmware.

so what is trim going to do for me ? most likely....nothing.

trim cant make a drive faster then its maximum speed, thats what i always get on all my intel ssd's.
 
I wanted to thank everyone for all the great info on this thread. I ordered the item through NewModeUS and hopefully will receive it in the mail today for install.

So if I understand the procedure correctly...

1. Remove Optical Drive
2. Put my SSD in the Bracket from NewModeUS and place it in the optical bay.
(Just plug in the SATA Plug ?)
3. Place the Original HDD back in the original spot.
4. Plug in my Flash Drive with SL.
5. Boot while holding down option key.
6. Reload OS.

That sounds about right ?
 
Sure, if your original HDD is out of the mac now. If it isn't, there's no need to remove it.
 
FarSeide said:
I wanted to thank everyone for all the great info on this thread. I ordered the item through NewModeUS and hopefully will receive it in the mail today for install.

So if I understand the procedure correctly...

1. Remove Optical Drive
2. Put my SSD in the Bracket from NewModeUS and place it in the optical bay.
(Just plug in the SATA Plug ?)
3. Place the Original HDD back in the original spot.
4. Plug in my Flash Drive with SL.
5. Boot while holding down option key.
6. Reload OS.

That sounds about right ?
Click to expand...

that about sums it up

good luck
 
QUESTION FOR THOSE WHO DID THIS MOD SPECIFICALLY WITH SSD.

So I got the bracket from NewMode yesterday. Unfortunately my Hitatchi 7K500 isnt scheduled to be here till tomorrow (Monday.) So I decided to be proactive and move the SSD over. I took the SuperDrive out. Installed the SSD from the HDD spot to the bracket then installed everything leaving nothing in the normal HDD spot. Turned the MBP on and then pointed towards the SSD as the boot drive. I have restarted 4 times since but moving the SSD from the normal spot to the bracket in the SuperDrive bay added a SOLID 8 seconds if not more onto the boot time. What could cause this?

Before, when the little apple logo would appear and the spiny status logo would appear under it, it would take half a spin of the status light to boot to the desktop. Now I get like 6 complete spins of the status light before it boots.

Any idea why this would be? seems strange... I dont mean to be pimpy about it but when you pay 300 bones for an SSD and for no reason its now taking 3 times as long to boot for no reason, it gets aggravating.

Any ideas?
 
MikeSantor said:
QUESTION FOR THOSE WHO DID THIS MOD SPECIFICALLY WITH SSD.

So I got the bracket from NewMode yesterday. Unfortunately my Hitatchi 7K500 isnt scheduled to be here till tomorrow (Monday.) So I decided to be proactive and move the SSD over. I took the SuperDrive out. Installed the SSD from the HDD spot to the bracket then installed everything leaving nothing in the normal HDD spot. Turned the MBP on and then pointed towards the SSD as the boot drive. I have restarted 4 times since but moving the SSD from the normal spot to the bracket in the SuperDrive bay added a SOLID 8 seconds if not more onto the boot time. What could cause this?

Before, when the little apple logo would appear and the spiny status logo would appear under it, it would take half a spin of the status light to boot to the desktop. Now I get like 6 complete spins of the status light before it boots.

Any idea why this would be? seems strange... I dont mean to be pimpy about it but when you pay 300 bones for an SSD and for no reason its now taking 3 times as long to boot for no reason, it gets aggravating.

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Yes. Wait for the HD to arrive and put it in. Then see if you still get delays. If you do, specifically select your SSD as startup disk using the startup disk preference pane.

I imagine that the MBP will start from the standard HD bay by default and maybe there's some shortcuts built in where the system says "right, there's a HD there, and it's the startup disk, let's go". And when the disk is not where it's expected, it will start scanning all attached drives for any install of a bootable OS, which will take much longer. Just a guess.

I have noticed much longer pre-boot time, BTW - I didn't do anything about it because I hardly ever boot anyway.

All said, I think this is due to the Macs boot process rather than specific to the SSD.
 
I don't know if it's been said in this thread, but I'd like to warn the guys who swapped the hdd and the ssd. That's what I did few month ago on my MBP 13". The hdd in the regular bay and the ssd in the optibay with the newmodeus caddy and SL on it.

Everything worked fine till I tried to calibrate the battery. I let the MBP run out of battery and instead of going to sleep, where the computer should save its state on the hard disk, in that case the ssd. It just dies.

I tried multiple tests and also found people in my case. The only solution so far is to put the ssd in the regular bay and the hdd in the optibay. That's the only solution that worked for me.
 
TripleJJJ said:
I don't know if it's been said in this thread, but I'd like to warn the guys who swapped the hdd and the ssd. That's what I did few month ago on my MBP 13". The hdd in the regular bay and the ssd in the optibay with the newmodeus caddy and SL on it.

Everything worked fine till I tried to calibrate the battery. I let the MBP run out of battery and instead of going to sleep, where the computer should save its state on the hard disk, in that case the ssd. It just dies.

I tried multiple tests and also found people in my case. The only solution so far is to put the ssd in the regular bay and the hdd in the optibay. That's the only solution that worked for me.
Click to expand...

No, This hasnt been said yet (as I read the whole thread front to back twice before Deciding to do this mod.) Thanks for the info. Im Super anal about calibrating my battery so this may be a problem...
 
If Hard Drive #2 is mounted, but only used infrequently, what kind of battery life can we expect?
 
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