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MCE Optibay Alternative CHEAP

Eddyisgreat said:
Perhaps next black friday lol.

I missed the 160 and got the 80 gb instead. $1/gb is ridiculous.
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Heheh, yeah, thankfully I didn't have to wait that long. 80 GB would be too small for me. And so I did pounce this morning, on that Intel 160 GB SSD I was eyeing. I got a price alert (from thetracktor.com,) that one of Amazon's sellers dropped its price about $50 -- and I surely didn't want to have to keep waiting for another Black Friday-esque rebate opportunity -- so I ordered the last one they had in stock.

I've got my MaxUpgrades optical bay kit, and the nimitz HDD/SSD caddy is on the way from China.

Looking forward to piecing this upgrade all together!
 
Hey, anyone have a similar issue??

I have a late 2007 MBP, bought one of the cheap Ebay caddy's (PATA). Installed a new 500gb drive into the caddy, everything went smoothly. When I booted up though, I got this error popup after I logged in,

"The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer."

But, once I went to Disk Utility, the disk was there and I was able to create a new volume. When I started moving some files over to the volume, everything seemed fine, until suddenly everything froze up. The trackpad went totally unresponsive, and pressing a key on the keyboard once was like holding it down. I had to hold down the power button to shut down. On restart, the drive was nowhere to be found. Restarted again, the drive showed up this time, but when I tried to go to Disk Utility, the same freezing occurred again.

I popped the drive back out and plugged it into another computer, and it seems to be working fine. My only guess is the caddy is somehow defective? anyone have a clue?

EDIT:

In case anyone's interested, I may have solved the problem by forcing my drive into SATA I (150Gb/s) mode (it's native SATA II 300Gb/s). I saw this on a forum somewhere, seems like it did the trick. Some drives have a physical jumper you can set to force it into this mode, my Samsung drive doesn't. Either you need to set it using ES-Tool (bootable disk, downloadable from Samsung, and I couldn't get it to work on my MBP), or use this program here to create a bootable CD that just changes the setting:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b2b_bbs_msg_id=126

Seems to work so far, must be something about how the pata/sata connector can't handle the 300Gb/s bus.
 
Last edited:
theman said:
Hey, anyone have a similar issue??

I have a late 2007 MBP, bought one of the cheap Ebay caddy's (PATA). Installed a new 500gb drive into the caddy, everything went smoothly. When I booted up though, I got this error popup after I logged in,

"The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer."

But, once I went to Disk Utility, the disk was there and I was able to create a new volume. When I started moving some files over to the volume, everything seemed fine, until suddenly everything froze up. The trackpad went totally unresponsive, and pressing a key on the keyboard once was like holding it down. I had to hold down the power button to shut down. On restart, the drive was nowhere to be found. Restarted again, the drive showed up this time, but when I tried to go to Disk Utility, the same freezing occurred again.

I popped the drive back out and plugged it into another computer, and it seems to be working fine. My only guess is the caddy is somehow defective? anyone have a clue?

EDIT:

In case anyone's interested, I may have solved the problem by forcing my drive into SATA I (150Gb/s) mode (it's native SATA II 300Gb/s). I saw this on a forum somewhere, seems like it did the trick. Some drives have a physical jumper you can set to force it into this mode, my Samsung drive doesn't. Either you need to set it using ES-Tool (bootable disk, downloadable from Samsung, and I couldn't get it to work on my MBP), or use this program here to create a bootable CD that just changes the setting:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/faqView.do?b2b_bbs_msg_id=126

Seems to work so far, must be something about how the pata/sata connector can't handle the 300Gb/s bus.
Click to expand...

what is recommended for a 2011 MBP. I want to add more space. I have the 256 SSD drive on mine

thanks in advance
 
Do you guys know of other ebay dealers with the right bay? Or one for under $30? The seller currently on ebay is on vacation or something
 
stainlessliquid said:
Just installed this one from jacobparts http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150652814931#ht_1431wt_1317

Fits perfect and is compatible with the little screw attachment from the dvd drive. The HDD also screws into the caddy.

So yes it does screw down (on one side, same as the $100 Optibay, the opposite side doesn't screw down but it doesn't need it), it also does NOT shake or move once the lid is closed. It is the exact same size as the superdrive with no plastic bezels to get in the way (the photo shows a black plastic panel on one side, thats a separate piece in the box to attach on pc laptops).

If you want to save $10 on something shipped from the USA instead of China and have a caddy that functions identical to the Optibay then get that one.

PS: Be careful unscrewing the black screws on the superdrive, I came very close to stripping one so much that it wouldn't unscrew, they are made of really soft metal and might be torqued too tight. Because of that don't tighten the black screws too much when installing the caddy or you won't be able to get them out later.
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Just FYI, I ordered this and not only did it not have the screw holes, it was too thick to fit into my late 2008 unibody Macbook. Useless.
 
stainlessliquid said:
PS: Be careful unscrewing the black screws on the superdrive, I came very close to stripping one so much that it wouldn't unscrew, they are made of really soft metal and might be torqued too tight. Because of that don't tighten the black screws too much when installing the caddy or you won't be able to get them out later.
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Yes. Agreed. This happened to me. :(

I managed to get the screw out, had to use a small drill, but what a pain in the butt.
 
To those of you with external optical drives now... does your eject key on your keyboard no longer work to eject DVD's?

Is adding System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Eject.menu menulet to our OS X menubar the most convenient replacement for that, or is there some way to make the eject key work again, but with the external drive instead?
 
I recently purchased the OWC Data Doubler (which is the same of the MaxUpgrades version).

I've found that the OWC unit has two additional mounting holes that let me screw into the Mac chassis whereas all the other solutions do not offer the same screw holes.
 
Fofer said:
To those of you with external optical drives now... does your eject key on your keyboard no longer work to eject DVD's?

Is adding System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Eject.menu menulet to our OS X menubar the most convenient replacement for that, or is there some way to make the eject key work again, but with the external drive instead?
Click to expand...

Answering my own question:

Adding Apple's own eject.menu menulet

A better third-party menulet, called Semulov

Creating a replacement keyboard shortcut, for "Eject External Disk"

Repurposing the now-defunct Eject key to do another function (and remove its delay) -- KeyRemap4MacBook and NoEjectDelay

----------
alphaod said:
I recently purchased the OWC Data Doubler (which is the same of the MaxUpgrades version).

I've found that the OWC unit has two additional mounting holes that let me screw into the Mac chassis whereas all the other solutions do not offer the same screw holes.
Click to expand...

Perhaps, but it's $65, right? Check the title of this thread; we're discussing inexpensive alternatives. The recommended Nimitz one I got on eBay was $20 and works fine. I don't think the two additional mounting holes are necessary, or worth the extra $45.
 
Fofer said:
Perhaps, but it's $65, right? Check the title of this thread; we're discussing inexpensive alternatives. The recommended Nimitz one I got on eBay was $20 and works fine. I don't think the two additional mounting holes are necessary, or worth the extra $45.
Click to expand...

Value is subjective. What you think does not change the way I perceive value. I think the extra 2 mounting holes is worth it.
 
alphaod said:
Value is subjective. What you think does not change the way I perceive value. I think the extra 2 mounting holes is worth it.
Click to expand...

Uh... okay, whatever. This thread's about *cheap* alternatives, not ones with $45 unneccessary mounting holes. LOL
 
alphaod said:
Whether or not it's necessary is also subjective.
Click to expand...

I'd disagree with that. It's either necessary or it's not. Do you feel safer with two more screws than Apple themselves would have used? Perhaps. Good on you. But if all the thousands of users who'd previously upgraded without those two extra screws in place have had no mounting problems, then I'd go so far as to argue that they are, in fact, not necessary.

Also, the existence of the word "CHEAP" in this thread's title is not subjective.
 
Fofer said:
I'd disagree with that. It's either necessary or it's not. Do you feel safer with two more screws than Apple themselves would have used? Perhaps. Good on you. But if all the thousands of users who'd previously upgraded without those two extra screws in place have had no mounting problems, then I'd go so far as to argue that they are, in fact, not necessary.

Also, the existence of the word "CHEAP" in this thread's title is not subjective.
Click to expand...

The optibay will slide around unless you secure it. There are several ways to secure it, one of the being with screws in correct mounting holes, another is to tape it down. I'm not sure what you mean by "safe." I think the additional mounting holes are absolutely necessary. Whether you agree with me with another matter. It's my opinion on the matter. I'm not telling you you're wrong or whatnot.

I am not disputing the title of the thread. I'm simply stating my opinion that that I find the value offered by the OWC mounting solution to be of good value. After buying 3 480GB SSDs, spending $65 on a properly designed optibay mounting solution is pretty cheap in my book. It's also cheaper than the MCE solution which fits in the topic of discussion if you are one to compare items only on monetary terms.
 
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