Optibay - 2011 Macbook Pro

[poppalarge]

Hi

I have a late 2011 15" Macbook Pro and I bought a Kingston SSD, and a (cheap replica) Optibay off ebay.

Foolishly, I read the small print on my ebay purchase after purchasing and it says it's not compatible with the 2011 Models.

I did some investigation and I can't find a definitive answer as to why it's not compatible.

I had planned to keep the stock 500gb HDD in the main bay and run VMs off the SSD in the Optibay.

Does anyone have the answer?

ta

 

[ahdickter]

1. If you really don't know, then why not try it out and see?

2. Do you have a late or early 2011 MBP? With the early ones, only one of the SATA connections is actually SATA III. The connection to the optical drive is usually SATA II. So if you decide to pop in an SSD, it's better to move the HDD to the optical drive and put the SSD in the main port to maximize speed.

You can check by doing the following:

a. Open up the System Information app.
b. Click on the Serial-ATA option.
c. Click on each of the Intel Chipsets and see what the Link Speed is.
d. If it's 6 gigabits, it's SATA III. If it's 3 gigabits, it's SATA II

 

[Jro82]

Late 2011 15

Your Main HD bay is SATA III 6GB and your Optibay is SATA III 3GB
There is a lot of conflicting reports about that speed though so best to go into your System Info app as noted above.

It would be wise to move your SSD to your main drive and your HDD into the optibay.

 

[maflynn]

It would be wise to move your SSD to your main drive and your HDD into the optibay.

But what about the sudden motion sensor and the drive sleeping in the optibay. I've read reports of issues with hard drives in the optical bay or am I mistaken?

 

[poppalarge]

Late 2011 15

Your Main HD bay is SATA III 6GB and your Optibay is SATA III 3GB
There is a lot of conflicting reports about that speed though so best to go into your System Info app as noted above.

It would be wise to move your SSD to your main drive and your HDD into the optibay.

It looks like both are 6Gb, from the system profiler

 

[ahdickter]

It looks like both are 6Gb, from the system profiler

That's good news. However, I still recommend placing the SSD in the main HDD bay (sometimes the EFI is finicky.)

But what about the sudden motion sensor and the drive sleeping in the optibay. I've read reports of issues with hard drives in the optical bay or am I mistaken?

There are some reports of this happening. Unless you are in the habit of shaking your MBP many times a day while it's running, the lack of SMS won't really be noticed. Depending on the HDD used, it automatically does it on its own as well.

Sometimes the HDD doesn't sleep automatically (depends who you talk to.) The best thing you can do is manually adjust the amount of time it takes the HDD to spin down. This link should help:

http://blog.macsales.com/13349-quick-tip-save-battery-by-spinning-down-hard-drive-sooner

Good luck!