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MCE Optibay Alternative CHEAP

So now that we have two hard drives in our Macbooks. Anyone know how to automatically unmount the second hard drive?

I'm using my second hard drive for photo storage and I don't need it to be on whenever the computer is on. I'm guessing this might be possible via the terminal?
 
bware189 said:
I installed a x25-m, of course, transfering the HDD to the optibay. Here is my problem, which i mentioned earlier in the thread:

Whenever I shutdown, restart or hibernate, I hear, right as the fans shutoff, a loud, almost sharp click. It is obviously the HDD. As many of us know,(that have this set up, or have read the optibay thread) this "hard shutdown" is probably due to the lack of sudden motion sensor for the HDD in the optibay setup. What to do, what to do...especially considering the fact that I boot frequently between Win 7 and OS X.

Well, after some research on the interwebs, I have come to the conclusion that ejecting the poor thing prior to shutdown, much like any external device, nets a happy HDD. Very good news.

In the process I came to the conclusion that there should be some automation to this, and sure enough, in terminal, you can augment the volume to not mount on boot. It is a beautifully simple process as noted in this post:
http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-69174.html

I was expecting to find an even more elegant process in windows. Lo and behold, the process is evading me. If anyone out there is on a similar path , could they be so bold as to link their findings? Possibly we could collaborate to right this terrible wrong. Shame on windows indeed (I was raised to be believe that windows was more "customizable" and "more in touch with coding").​
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This post from earlier in this thread discusses modifying the /etc/fstab for your mounting desires. I will caution you however, Snow Leopard has gone away from the UNIX standard of fstab, to a plist somewhere probably. I was planning on searching for this method when I got my second drive installed. So if anyone out there knows how the automountd daemon is setup in snow, clue us in please.
 
mac8867 said:
This post from earlier in this thread discusses modifying the /etc/fstab for your mounting desires. I will caution you however, Snow Leopard has gone away from the UNIX standard of fstab, to a plist somewhere probably. I was planning on searching for this method when I got my second drive installed. So if anyone out there knows how the automountd daemon is setup in snow, clue us in please.
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I must correct myself. It appears after researching via the man pages, that the /etc/fstab method is just find for our purposes. Snow doesn't use it to mount it's primary OS partitions, that's what confused me.
 
mac8867 said:
I must correct myself. It appears after researching via the man pages, that the /etc/fstab method is just find for our purposes. Snow doesn't use it to mount it's primary OS partitions, that's what confused me.
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Hi would you mind posting the code you used?

Thanks!
 
cooldude1015 said:
Hi would you mind posting the code you used?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Nvm I figured out the code:

LABEL=VOLUMENAMEHERE none hfs ro,noauto 0 0

Notice that there is no "+" sign after hfs. My only question is... It looks like this unmounts the partition. Does that mean no more power is sent to the second hard drive and it has powered down?

Thanks
 
cooldude1015 said:
Nvm I figured out the code:

LABEL=VOLUMENAMEHERE none hfs ro,noauto 0 0

Notice that there is no "+" sign after hfs. My only question is... It looks like this unmounts the partition. Does that mean no more power is sent to the second hard drive and it has powered down?

Thanks
Click to expand...

OK, I haven't done this yet on my machine -- my mce is ordered, but not yet arrived. However, this is basic UNIX file system 101 stuff.

Yes, the site describes how to prevent your second drive from auto-mounting.

Your line:
LABEL=VOLUMENAMEHERE none hfs ro,noauto 0 0

Should read:
LABEL=VOLUMENAMEHERE /Volumes/VOLUMENAMEHERE hfs rw,auto 0 0

the "none" is the mount point where the drive will be mounted. By specifying "none" you are saying this is a swap partition. In my correction line I am assuming you want your drive mounted to a mount point (a directory) named the same as the drive.

Note, the "rw" instead of "ro", ro=read only, and I do not think you want that.

Note the "auto" instead of "noauto", meaning, automatically mount me at boot up (or when mount -a is issued, a being all)
 
Well thanks to this thread and also post #389. I am now the proud owner of a 2TB macbook unibody :D (the cheap ebay caddies are awesome, even if they need to be modified slightly, but hell it cost $12.50 with shipping so cant complain).

12.7mm drive fits even if its a little tight compared to the 9.5mm.

Guess its one of the plus sides to owning a 13" late 2008 Alu Macbook with the removable battery.
Now if only there was some way of getting it to accept more than 4GB of ram. (yes i know that it can take 6GB but 8GB would be nice)

:)
 
Sata Connectors on mid-2009 mbp

OK, I received my upgrade "stuff" opened the back of my mid-2009 macbook pro 13"... no problems, everything was as I left it after the last upgrade...

I come to the sata connectors on the mobo--- I have never taken these off, and of course, have no idea where I could get a replacement if I broke them. So I declared a stopping point for research.

How do those connectors work? DO the slide, pop, pull, push???
 
mac8867 said:
OK, I received my upgrade "stuff" opened the back of my mid-2009 macbook pro 13"... no problems, everything was as I left it after the last upgrade...

I come to the sata connectors on the mobo--- I have never taken these off, and of course, have no idea where I could get a replacement if I broke them. So I declared a stopping point for research.

How do those connectors work? DO the slide, pop, pull, push???
Click to expand...

Use a flat plastic object and pull the connector up from the logic board. Be careful about this, if the connector breaks you'd be in trouble.
 
OK, just installed the "stock" MCE optibay kit in my mackbook pro mid-2009, Snow Leopard 10.6.3. Not a single hitch. The drive came up as another drive in the Finder, ready to use.

The external drive enclosure is cheap and plastic with no faceplate. I sent a note to MCE informing them that my kit was missing a faceplate and asked them to ship it. We'll see how they respond.

What is nice about this kit is included software what assists in getting the DVD Player application to launch without an internal super drive. That was a nice touch.

So all in all, a very clean, semi-easy upgrade.
 
-AG- said:
Well thanks to this thread and also post #389. I am now the proud owner of a 2TB macbook unibody :D (the cheap ebay caddies are awesome, even if they need to be modified slightly, but hell it cost $12.50 with shipping so cant complain).

12.7mm drive fits even if its a little tight compared to the 9.5mm.

Guess its one of the plus sides to owning a 13" late 2008 Alu Macbook with the removable battery.
Now if only there was some way of getting it to accept more than 4GB of ram. (yes i know that it can take 6GB but 8GB would be nice)

:)
Click to expand...

2TB - very nice :)

I am surprised you could fit a 12.5mm drive in the opti bay caddy. Mine is super tight with a 9.5mm drive installed, it didn't look like there was any room to spare.
 
mac8867 said:
The external drive enclosure is cheap and plastic with no faceplate. I sent a note to MCE informing them that my kit was missing a faceplate and asked them to ship it. We'll see how they respond.
Click to expand...

so, I spoke with MCE customer service and they told me "they are working on the bezel." I asked if they were going to send it to me once they were done "working on it." The guy responded that "they will be sending the bezel to all their customers."

Phew --- and I thought I would be stuck with an ugly open front dvd drive. I can easily hold my breath for that bezel.

Oh, one other note... the MCE external case for your super drive comes with two usb cables. One for data and one for power. If you have a "newer" machine, you do not need the power cable to operate the enclosure.
 
I'm having some problems with my SSD in my OptiBay, it's making Disk Utility crash. All the time. I can't format it or restore my backup to it (thank god for backups..).

I wonder if this is caused by the OptiBay itself or the SSD actually crashing. I'll be bringing it to work and working on it all day, I guess.
 
Heilage said:
I'm having some problems with my SSD in my OptiBay, it's making Disk Utility crash. All the time. I can't format it or restore my backup to it (thank god for backups..).

I wonder if this is caused by the OptiBay itself or the SSD actually crashing. I'll be bringing it to work and working on it all day, I guess.
Click to expand...

only one way to find out!! :(
 
Im sure this was answered somewhere in here, but I went back quite a ways and didn't see it. Please forgive me!

What is the reasoning for putting the HDD in the optibay and the SSD/Boot disk in the stock drive position? Wouldn't you want the HDD to be where it is, due to the shock sensor?


Thank you so much! Im preparing to do this to my new 13" i ordered this morning :D
 
lionheartednyhc said:
Im sure this was answered somewhere in here, but I went back quite a ways and didn't see it. Please forgive me!

What is the reasoning for putting the HDD in the optibay and the SSD/Boot disk in the stock drive position? Wouldn't you want the HDD to be where it is, due to the shock sensor?


Thank you so much! Im preparing to do this to my new 13" i ordered this morning :D
Click to expand...

first, congrats on the 13". The shock sensor was briefly mentioned somewhere --- maybe in this thread, not sure --- but you bring up a good point. I installed my sdd in the stock position and platter drive in the optibay.

To be honest, it never occurred to me to switch their positions, but your logic makes a lot of sense. I think maybe it's a mental block for me, putting the boot drive in the stock drive position. But clearly, the shock sensor has no value to the sdd.

Does anyone boot primarily from their drive in the optibay?
 
lionheartednyhc said:
Im sure this was answered somewhere in here, but I went back quite a ways and didn't see it. Please forgive me!

What is the reasoning for putting the HDD in the optibay and the SSD/Boot disk in the stock drive position? Wouldn't you want the HDD to be where it is, due to the shock sensor?


Thank you so much! Im preparing to do this to my new 13" i ordered this morning :D
Click to expand...

I believe it is because Mac OS X is programmed to save the hibernate data to the drive in the proper hard disk bay when the computer's battery goes completely flat.

So I guess if you want to save and resume the hibernate data quickly (which I believe involves copying the entire contents of RAM to the disk) you'd want that to be done on the SSD.
 
Has anyone yet to try the dual drive setup on the new 2010 MBPs? If so does hibernation work if the boot drive is in the optibay?
 
DoFoT9 said:
only one way to find out!! :(
Click to expand...

It's the SSD. I have now tried it serveral times, from several sources, and lastly took it out of the OptiBay and tried it in an external USB enclosure, the issue persists.
 
mac8867 said:
first, congrats on the 13". The shock sensor was briefly mentioned somewhere --- maybe in this thread, not sure --- but you bring up a good point. I installed my sdd in the stock position and platter drive in the optibay.

To be honest, it never occurred to me to switch their positions, but your logic makes a lot of sense. I think maybe it's a mental block for me, putting the boot drive in the stock drive position. But clearly, the shock sensor has no value to the sdd.

Does anyone boot primarily from their drive in the optibay?
Click to expand...

Ok, so after posting that I read the ENTIRE thread. That was fun! From what I gather, the reason to put the SSD in the stock position is to allow hibernation to work. As I assumed before though, this setup will then take away the SMS protection from the HDD.

My question is, what is more important? SMS or Hybernation? That would seem to help make the decision of what to put where.

Secondly, what is the easiest way to get the SSD set up in the stock position? Would you have the clone the HDD to the SSD before you install it (and swap the HDD into the optibay) in the computer in order for it to boot from it? Or is there an easier way?
 
DoFoT9 said:
damn man. that sucks! get a replacement! thank god for backups. how old is it?
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I bought it last summer, so warranty is a non-issue. I'll just have to live without my SSD until I can arrange things with OCZ. There is nothing to worry about on that end, luckily.
 
DoFoT9 said:
OCZ.. hmmm... not a fan of them, as they are made by samsung. baadd things ive heard from them. :(
Click to expand...

OCZ has a full range of drives based on Samsung, Indilinx, and Sandforce controllers. Some are better than others, of course, but your statement is not the whole truth.
 
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