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Optibay/ Datadoubler

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Xypheric

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 7, 2011
10
0
I went ahead and got apples SSD and of course im feeling the crunch in space. I had read about this OPtibay item or Datadoubler and was wondering if anyone has any experience with these items. I was thinking of getting a 7200 rpm hard drive to put in there but wasnt sure if the vibrations will make a difference or if its hard to set up.

Any thoughts?
 
TheJing said:
I bought a cheap one on Ebay and I haven't had any issues whatsoever in 6 months.
Click to expand...

Is it the namebrand ones i mentioned above or just kinda like an offbrand. I was reading reviews on some of the offbrand ones like on amazon and people were complaining of having to mod them or that the hard drive isnt secured in and can un connect if it moves to much?
 
Mine wasn't a brand. Just a piece of plastic. I had to unscrew parts of it so that it would fit in the computer but that took 2 minutes.

The drive fit perfectly in the there though. Easy to take out and put back in, which I've done a few times.

It did feel VERY cheap though. The part where you connect your drive was moving around and stuff. But once it's in the computer and the bottom case is on, that doesn't matter since it doesn't have any space to move in anymore.
 
I have the optibay and I've been happy with that. I can't answer for other makers but with the Optibay you get an enclosure to put the displaced optical drive in.
 
It's definitely worth it if you have an ssd, i use a 128gb ssd for booting and 750gb for other files
 
Guys I'm having a bit of a issue with setting up second SSD. I bought a second optibay drive caddy from eBay fenvi brand, seems to work fine with my hdd but when I put in my corsair force series 3 180GB SATA III SSD into it, the disk utility is unable to unmount and therefore cannot format it. It formatted fine to HFSJ while it was in my USB external case which i did before putting the drive into optical bay slot.

So now I moved my hdd to my optibay(fenvi branded cheap one on eBay) and my SSD into my main drive bay. My laptop is a early 2011 MBP 15 brand new only 3 weeks old. It has both ports as 6Gb/s I checked under system settings before buying the SSD.

It is working fine with SSD in primary and hdd in optical bay. i am in the process of installing lion freshly and going to restore my backup from time machine. One thing I do want to do is move the SSD back into optibay since it doesn't need sudden motion sensor. Am I doing something wrong on the hardware or software side?

I triple checked all cables, made sure everything was nice and tight, put little plastic peace to tighten up optibay each time, after the 3rd time I finally swapped the drives into the above mentioned configuration.:( please let me know.
 
A bit more information as to what stuff is on each drive might help.
If you could format the SSD in the external drive why do you think you need to do it again. Just copy the data over. Start with the option alt key and launch the right one format the non system disk.

In theory at least just switching the drives, with the SSD holding OSX and the HDD only other stuff, should work without any extra work. If the secondary drive is not scraped clean of system files though the MBP probably just picks the drive in the main bay and starts from it if you don't force it to do otherwise with refit or alt key.
 
Xypheric said:
I went ahead and got apples SSD and of course im feeling the crunch in space. I had read about this OPtibay item or Datadoubler and was wondering if anyone has any experience with these items. I was thinking of getting a 7200 rpm hard drive to put in there but wasnt sure if the vibrations will make a difference or if its hard to set up.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

I'm about to do this as well w/ my late '11 15" mbp that has apple's SSD, i'm looking to get a rotational for storage... Strangely, these forums have been of little aid other than to promote self doubt (omfg it voids the warranty, amg heat, zomfg vibration, the noise!, ohs noes sudden motion sensors, the screws don't line up the way i want, it's not being held in as snug as i want, and on and on and on and on and on and on). I sort of get it, I want to protect my $3k investment as much as anyone else, but I think there's more than a little bit of lunacy around these parts regarding the subject and am just going to get one and experiment and find out the answers for myself. I'd recommend you do the same :)
 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004FM4UGE

Upsides:
$12, how can you possibly go wrong?
It works perfectly.
It fits using two of the three stock mounting points.

Downsides:
No instructions,not really a big deal since you can find them online easily enough.
Need to trim one of the tabs about a millimeter, so not too bad. In the first picture it's the tab on the bottom left that needs to be trimmed.
Can't change drives without removing it.

98Mh4.jpg

CBMZj.jpg

tQ15R.png
 
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RedReplicant said:
Yeah. Just a tiny bit, you can make it fit without trimming but it went in a lot easier when trimmed.
Click to expand...

While I paid more then 12 bucks, I did get a product that fit perfectly, including directions and as I already posted an optical drive enclosure. All in all, I'm happy with what I got.
 
maflynn said:
While I paid more then 12 bucks, I did get a product that fit perfectly, including directions and as I already posted an optical drive enclosure. All in all, I'm happy with what I got.
Click to expand...

I wasn't trying to offend you or anything. If I had extra money laying around I'd have definitely gotten a nicer kit. :)
 
Xypheric said:
I went ahead and got apples SSD and of course im feeling the crunch in space. I had read about this OPtibay item or Datadoubler and was wondering if anyone has any experience with these items. I was thinking of getting a 7200 rpm hard drive to put in there but wasnt sure if the vibrations will make a difference or if its hard to set up.

Any thoughts?
Click to expand...

ordered a datadoubler & 1tb 5400rpm hdd.... 2 day delivery, may not receive until monday though this late in week... will let you know how it goes
 
maflynn said:
While I paid more then 12 bucks, I did get a product that fit perfectly, including directions and as I already posted an optical drive enclosure. All in all, I'm happy with what I got.
Click to expand...

I would opt for the optibay kit anyway. The enclosure for the optical drive is worth it IMO.
 
I purchased a lightly used OWC DataDoubler from a friend that sold their MacBook in favor of a MBA and iMac setup.

Installation was a breeze and didn't require any cutting, chopping, or any modifications to my Late 2011 MBP. I added a 500GB 7200 RPM drive from a previous computer to my 750GB 7200 factory installed. Everything hums along great.
 
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