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MCE Optibay Alternative CHEAP

saggel said:
I just got the ssd and all I need is the caddy.
I've decided to put the SSD in the caddy, so all I need from you is to guide me to select the right one :) please? :)
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Don't know your drive but for my OCZ Vertex 2 (sata II) drive:

OWC Data Doubler is highly recommended. Build quality is excellent and it comes with clear instructions and a nice little tool set for the job.

Ordered mine on amazon for $49. Apparently doesn't work well with data III drives, however.
 
sorryiwasdreami said:
Don't know your drive but for my OCZ Vertex 2 (sata II) drive:

OWC Data Doubler is highly recommended. Build quality is excellent and it comes with clear instructions and a nice little tool set for the job.

Ordered mine on amazon for $49. Apparently doesn't work well with data III drives, however.
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Thanx, I got both the disk and the caddy and now I'm planning the installation. I need to be back in a productive machine the same day and I need everything to be as normal after the new disk is installed. :)

So any advice on how to avoid problems it will really appreciated... :)
 
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diamond3 said:
Any other options available? I noticed the price has gone up on the Hard Drive Cuddy on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Unibody-MacBook-SuperDrive-Replacement/dp/B0058AH2US/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332390034&sr=8-1
Did most of you order from AMZNetek or BrainyTrade?

I think the OWC data doubler is way overpriced for what it does. I can't see why theirs is so much more.

Also, I going to try and go without the DVD enclosure. I'm not even sure the last time I truly needed my optical drive.
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i think part of that is they include the tools for you to do it. and it looks lighter weight then other ones iv seen, that may only be a little bit (I'm going to try and see if i can find weights), but for me when my laptop is in my bag with textbooks and whatnot that little goes along way..
and i would go without the dvd inclosure but as of now this is the only computer i use.
 
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diamond3 said:
Any other options available? I noticed the price has gone up on the Hard Drive Cuddy on amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Unibody-MacBook-SuperDrive-Replacement/dp/B0058AH2US/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332390034&sr=8-1
Did most of you order from AMZNetek or BrainyTrade?
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I ordered off of amazon via Brainytrade. I received it today, and inside the box is a business card for http://www.gogo-power.com. After looking up the hard drive caddy, it's only $15.99 and I believe it comes with free shipping as well which is cheaper than amazon. You can also get 10% off with the coupon code "gogo-power" which was on the business card as well.

Hard Drive Caddy link at gogo-power.com

I installed it and it works fine. My only major suggestion is make sure you have the right size of screw driver and do everything you can to keep any of the screws from stripping. There was one screw towards the end holding the optical drive in place that I almost didn't get out. The optical drive was in the way just enough I couldn't go at the screw straight on. After several failed attempts, I gave it one last go pushing harder than I would normally want to and got the screw to come out. It had a lot of loctite on the screw compared to the others, so it made it extra difficult to remove. Luckily, the caddy come with two more screws with a narrow head to replace the factory screws because the caddy pushes up closer to the screw.
 
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diamond3 said:
There was one screw towards the end holding the optical drive in place that I almost didn't get out. The optical drive was in the way just enough I couldn't go at the screw straight on. After several failed attempts, I gave it one last go pushing harder than I would normally want to
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Yep, same thing happened to me. It got stripped, in the end I needed to use a drill with a tiny bit to get that damn screw out...
 
diamond3 said:
I ordered off of amazon via Brainytrade. I received it today, and inside the box is a business card for http://www.gogo-power.com. After looking up the hard drive caddy, it's only $15.99 and I believe it comes with free shipping as well which is cheaper than amazon. You can also get 10% off with the coupon code "gogo-power" which was on the business card as well.
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Quick question, I just received my optibay from Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Unibody...H2US/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335331307&sr=8-1 and it didn't include any extra screws or anything to fit in between the hard drive and the edge of the adapter. Is this correct or should I plan on returning it to Amazon over missing parts?
 
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velkr said:
Quick question, I just received my optibay from Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Unibody...H2US/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335331307&sr=8-1 and it didn't include any extra screws or anything to fit in between the hard drive and the edge of the adapter. Is this correct or should I plan on returning it to Amazon over missing parts?
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The 4 screws that are already screwed in the sides of the caddy are all you need to secure the hard drive. Then use the existing screws in the Macbook to secure the caddy.
 
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sh0ebox said:
The 4 screws that are already screwed in the sides of the caddy are all you need to secure the hard drive. Then use the existing screws in the Macbook to secure the caddy.
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I was unsure of whether or not I was missing something, as the instructions said to lift a bracket before sliding the drive in and that wasn't there lol. Got it all installed now though, thanks!
 
velkr said:
Quick question, I just received my optibay from Amazon - http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Unibody...H2US/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335331307&sr=8-1 and it didn't include any extra screws or anything to fit in between the hard drive and the edge of the adapter. Is this correct or should I plan on returning it to Amazon over missing parts?
Click to expand...

velkr said:
I was unsure of whether or not I was missing something, as the instructions said to lift a bracket before sliding the drive in and that wasn't there lol. Got it all installed now though, thanks!
Click to expand...

Mine had 3 additional screws for the HD caddy. What reseller did you buy from on the amazon link? That might be the reason for the difference. Also, the black plastic thing in the tray where the hard drive sits was removed so i could put the hard drive in flat, slide it forward into the connection and then fill space that was created from sliding the hd forward.
 
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Am I the first to get reliable 6gb SATA in the optical bay of a late 2011 17" MBP?

I had to use a saw to get my vertex 3 SSD in the optical bay.

Images and details at: https://sites.google.com/site/themacbookproproject/home

Question for the experts out there: Am I the first to get reliable 6Gb SATA connection in the optical bay of a late 2011 17" MBP?


I really like the OWC Data Doubler and have an untested solution to get it working reliably at 6Gb SATA speeds. Anybody out there also working on it?

-Sam
 
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With the new SSDs and 1TB drives availabe it's really tempting to make my system 1TB + 256 from now 500GB + 80 (!).

But... the new MacBook Pro / Air is coming, and likely the opti bay slot will be gone. Besides I am now CPU constrained, No thanks to that pig, XCode.

BTW if you, like me, have one of the old Intel X-25M SSDs, use TRIMEnabler to make it pretty much as fast as it was when you first bought it. Works perfectly.
 
Props to the OP for your craftiness, but I've spent enough hours on my car stereo wiring to know that those kind of taped connections will not hold over time. It doesn't even have to disconnect – if it just jiggles enough to fluctuate the voltage, that's enough to cause problems with the drive.
 
Digidesign said:
Props to the OP for your craftiness, but I've spent enough hours on my car stereo wiring to know that those kind of taped connections will not hold over time. It doesn't even have to disconnect – if it just jiggles enough to fluctuate the voltage, that's enough to cause problems with the drive.
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= Soldering Iron :)
 
Hello: I am not sure if you were referring to me.

Digidesign said:
Props to the OP for your craftiness, but I've spent enough hours on my car stereo wiring to know that those kind of taped connections will not hold over time. It doesn't even have to disconnect – if it just jiggles enough to fluctuate the voltage, that's enough to cause problems with the drive.
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I am not sure if this comment was directed to me. If it was, I just wanted to say that I always impedance match with a oscilloscope after using silver bearing solder. Then I use 100% Organic Pixie Dust on all remaining 6Gb SATA III connections.

BTW, I have been consistently averaging ~1000Mb/s uncompressed speeds for over a month (with out a single I/O error).

Take care friend,
Sam
 
Three questions... My apologies if they have been asked before.

1. I just ordered my Optibay adapter from Amazon. Say, a few months down the road, my motherboard fails. If I were to put the original optical drive back in as it was originally, would Apple still honor the warranty. Or, is it obvious that the optical drive had been tampered with?

2. I plan on using the second drive with Windows 7. I currently use exFAT on my external drives because it works well with Windows and Mac, AND it supports large file sizes, which I need. Are there any better alternatives that I may have missed?

3. I've replaced my stock hard drive with an OCZ Vertex 3 SSD. It has been running fine for months now. How can I make sure I'm getting the best possible performance out of it?

Thanks!
 
mrat93 said:
Three questions... My apologies if they have been asked before.

1. I just ordered my Optibay adapter from Amazon. Say, a few months down the road, my motherboard fails. If I were to put the original optical drive back in as it was originally, would Apple still honor the warranty. Or, is it obvious that the optical drive had been tampered with?

2. I plan on using the second drive with Windows 7. I currently use exFAT on my external drives because it works well with Windows and Mac, AND it supports large file sizes, which I need. Are there any better alternatives that I may have missed?

3. I've replaced my stock hard drive with an OCZ Vertex 3 SSD. It has been running fine for months now. How can I make sure I'm getting the best possible performance out of it?

Thanks!
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1. They can't tell as long as you don't cause any damage while in there. It's just a couple screws, and then swap the enclosures.

2. I use NTFS for Mac ($20) and it works great. It allows me to format disks for NTFS in Disk Utility, and seamlessly lets me work with NTFS drives in OSX without a hiccup (after installing, it really acts like NTFS is natively supported). The alternative is MacDrive ($50) which lets you work with HFS+ drives in Windows. I've used that too, and it also works well. Personally, I'd just go with the first one and format all your non-startup disks as NTFS.

My setup is an SSD with 2 partitions, one for OSX/Apps (HFS+) and the other for Windows 7 (NTFS). My 1TB drive also has two partitions, one for the OSX home folder (HFS+) and the other for Windows storage (NTFS). As you can see, I have pretty mixed hard drive format, and it all works perfectly back and forth using data on each. (I also have both above programs installed)

3. I'll leave this for someone else. IIRC, it works perfectly as is. Don't use TRIMenabler though - it causes problems and beachballs.
 
hey there, could someone please help me find the right caddy for my macbook?
I am totally lost with how many millimetres the caddy has to be and if my macbook is a unibody or not.
I have a 2.26ghz macbook (not the pro), i think the release was in 2009. It is a totally white model, and it is 13inch.
Does anyone know which caddy i need?
thanks
btw i live in the uk
 
Here's a doozy... strange things are afoot... and I'm hoping for an explanation.

Late last year I did the SSD upgrade, in a mid-2010 MacBook Pro. I took out the optical drive and put it in an external caddy. Then I put a 160 GB SSD in the main drive bay as the startup volume, and put a 750 GB HDD in the optical bay (for large/media files.) Everything's working great. Nice speed boost, no problems with hibernation. Very happy.

Today, I decided I could use more space on the startup drive, so I cloned the 160 GB SSD over to a 512 GB (!) SSD, that was pulled from an early-2011 MacBook Pro. It's Apple branded. And I put that 512 GB SSD drive in my mid-2010 MacBook Pro, in place of the 160 GB SSD.

It starts up fine. But when I get to the desktop, I see that the secondary drive, the 750 GB HDD, doesn't mount. Disk Utility sees it, and reports that it's fine, the Mac OS/Finder just can't mount it. Disk Warrior reports similar issue -- the drive can't be mounted.

And so I put the 160 GB SSD back in the main drive bay, boot the machine, and voila, it's able to mount the secondary drive just fine, just as before.

So what's going on here? Is there some problem with the combination of 512 GB SSD and 750 GB HDD? Why can't I mount the secondary drive when I am booting via the 512 GB (Apple-branded) SSD, but can when I am booting via the 160 GB (third-party) SSD?

Thanks for any feedback.
 
Fofer said:
Here's a doozy... strange things are afoot... and I'm hoping for an explanation.

Late last year I did the SSD upgrade, in a mid-2010 MacBook Pro. I took out the optical drive and put it in an external caddy. Then I put a 160 GB SSD in the main drive bay as the startup volume, and put a 750 GB HDD in the optical bay (for large/media files.) Everything's working great. Nice speed boost, no problems with hibernation. Very happy.

Today, I decided I could use more space on the startup drive, so I cloned the 160 GB SSD over to a 512 GB (!) SSD, that was pulled from an early-2011 MacBook Pro. It's Apple branded. And I put that 512 GB SSD drive in my mid-2010 MacBook Pro, in place of the 160 GB SSD.

It starts up fine. But when I get to the desktop, I see that the secondary drive, the 750 GB HDD, doesn't mount. Disk Utility sees it, and reports that it's fine, the Mac OS/Finder just can't mount it. Disk Warrior reports similar issue -- the drive can't be mounted.

And so I put the 160 GB SSD back in the main drive bay, boot the machine, and voila, it's able to mount the secondary drive just fine, just as before.

So what's going on here? Is there some problem with the combination of 512 GB SSD and 750 GB HDD? Why can't I mount the secondary drive when I am booting via the 512 GB (Apple-branded) SSD, but can when I am booting via the 160 GB (third-party) SSD?

Thanks for any feedback.
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This probably isn't the only potential solution, but you can try doing a fresh install of OSX and then restore from a Time Machine backup.
 
I have a 15" Early 2008 MBP which is non-unibody so the optical drive connector is OBHD which is different than in unibody cases. Would either of these bays work with my system:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004FM4UGE/
http://www.amazon.com/Drive-Unibody-MacBook-SuperDrive-Replacement/dp/B0058AH2US/
http://www.newmodeus.com/pics/OBHD/OBHD-Matrix-6.html

I have a 12.5mm 1TB Samsung drive currently that I'd to put in an optibay so if you know of any that supports that height I'd appreciate it. I think the Newmodeus OBH-SATA12-BU might be the only one that will work?
 
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