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Optibay SSD Problem I Never Heard of Before :(

R

RyeRyeRye

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 24, 2011
6
0
Dubai
I bought a brand new MacBook Pro 15 inch, 2.3GHz Quad-core i7 with 8GB RAM earlier this month. I also bought 2 Vertex 3 MAX IOPS 120GB SSDs and an Optibay enclosure. My intention was to swap out the MBP's hard drive for an SSD and swap out the optical drive for the second SSD and run the 2 SSDs in a RAID0 configuration. Then do a clean install of Lion.

Well, my MBP arrived. I used it for a couple of weeks without changing anything and it worked flawlessly. Then I put in the 2 SSDs, but the system could only see the one in the HD bay. The other one wouldn't show up in System Profiler or in Disk Utility. I swapped the SSDs and still the system could see only the one in the HD bay. So the SSDs are both fine.

Now, I can almost hear you guys saying that's not a unique problem, the Optibay must be faulty. But here's the weird thing: when I connect my original hard drive to the Optibay, it SHOWS UP in System Profiler and Disk Utility. I can even boot from it without a glitch!!!

So the Optibay works with a HD but not an SSD. I spent hours googling this problem, I spent a good hour on the phone with Apple tech support, OCZ tech support and Optibay tech support. Everyone is just stumped.

Any ideas?
 
The SSD tries to connect at 6Gbit/s which doesn't seem to work in the Optibay (even if the connection is supposed to work at those speeds), the original HDD only connects at 3Gbit/s and works fine.

I'm not sure what the problem is, be it interference on the cable or something else entirely, but if you could force the SSD in the Optibay to connect at 3Gbit/s instead of 6Gbit/s it would work, you would lose some transfer speed though. Regardless, I don't think that's possible with Apple's locked up EFI.

Please do post if you do come across a solution, I stumbled across the same problem and ended up having to put my SSD in the main HDD slot and my HDD in the Optibay.
 
JronMasteR nailed it. No solution at this time. If you need two SSDs, better pick up a couple SATAII drives.
 
No you are wrong. Did you read the article? The 6G drives DO NOT WORK on the 17" and 15" models in the optibay. OWC made tests on all MBP they have and it didn't work on a single one. They work only on the 13" MBP's.
On the early models of the 15" and 17" which were connected to port 2 on the optical bay, which is a 3G port, they do work but only with 3G speed.

Read this: (OWC article)

In short – it’s a mixed bag.
13” – 100% no issues with 6Gbp/s SSD in any bay that has 6Gbp/s available
15” – 100% no issues with 6Gbp/s SSD in main bay, no-go with 6Gbp/s SSD in optical bay.
17” – Hit or Miss for main bay with 6Gbp/s SSD, no-go with 6Gbp/s SSD in optical bay.

So if you have 6Gb/s link available in your 15” or 17” optical bay, unless this problem is fixed – those with the reliable 3Gb/s optical connectivity are actually better off.
 
JronMasteR said:
No you are wrong. Did you read the article? The 6G drives DO NOT WORK on the 17" and 15" models in the optibay. OWC made tests on all MBP they have and it didn't work on a single one. They work only on the 13" MBP's.
On the early models of the 15" and 17" which were connected to port 2 on the optical bay, which is a 3G port, they do work but only with 3G speed.

Read this: (OWC article)

In short – it’s a mixed bag.
13” – 100% no issues with 6Gbp/s SSD in any bay that has 6Gbp/s available
15” – 100% no issues with 6Gbp/s SSD in main bay, no-go with 6Gbp/s SSD in optical bay.
17” – Hit or Miss for main bay with 6Gbp/s SSD, no-go with 6Gbp/s SSD in optical bay.

So if you have 6Gb/s link available in your 15” or 17” optical bay, unless this problem is fixed – those with the reliable 3Gb/s optical connectivity are actually better off.
Click to expand...


This article has come up in alot of threads, and people have countless times stated that their sata3 worked in the optibay.
It still has problems, and yes sata2 is more reliable but the optibay is capable of 6gb/s. even on the 15"/17"
 
eC1990ho said:
. . . people have countless times stated that their sata3 worked in the optibay . . .
Click to expand...

That is how I understand it as well.

There are many examples on the web (including here on this forum) of people who have successfully put 2 Vertex 3s in a RAID0 configuration on the latest MBPs. Some people are having problems (beach balls, etc.), but I have never heard of anyone who's SSD just doesn't show up in System Profiler.

So I don't think I have found an explanation for my problem yet . . .
 
There is no solution for you at this point. The only one who could solve it is Apple. But Apple will never do that, because the optical drive bay is non-user serviceable. They did not even take a statement about the Sata 6G issues in the main hard drive bay in the 17" MBP's.
I have never seen or heard from someone that is successfully running 2 Vertex 3 in RAID 0 on a 15" or 17" Early 2011, only 13" MBP's.
Even if you would get a new MBP, there is no guarantee that it would work. Keep up the OWC Blog.
Get a 240GB Vertex 3 MI or OWC 6G 240GB instead.
 
RyeRyeRye said:
That is how I understand it as well.

There are many examples on the web (including here on this forum) of people who have successfully put 2 Vertex 3s in a RAID0 configuration on the latest MBPs. Some people are having problems (beach balls, etc.), but I have never heard of anyone who's SSD just doesn't show up in System Profiler.

So I don't think I have found an explanation for my problem yet . . .
Click to expand...

Have you tried one SSD in the optical bay and no SSD in the HDD bay? Unfortunately, JronMasteR is right.
 
I want to do the same, but i wanna know something first.
If i put the hhd, which came if my macbook pro 13 2011, in the optical bay... wil this connection be sata 3?
cause when i see in "about my mac", the speed in serial ata/intel 6 series chipset for the hhd is 6gigabits (sata 3), but when i check for the superdrive, i see 3 gigabits (sata2)... but i'm not sure if it's because the superdrive is sata 2..
does anyone know if i put a hhd sata3 in this bay, will the speed information change for 6 gigabits?

sorry about my english.. i'm from brazil.
cheers
 
fsmorelli said:
I want to do the same, but i wanna know something first.
If i put the hhd, which came if my macbook pro 13 2011, in the optical bay... wil this connection be sata 3?
cause when i see in "about my mac", the speed in serial ata/intel 6 series chipset for the hhd is 6gigabits (sata 3), but when i check for the superdrive, i see 3 gigabits (sata2)... but i'm not sure if it's because the superdrive is sata 2..
does anyone know if i put a hhd sata3 in this bay, will the speed information change for 6 gigabits?

sorry about my english.. i'm from brazil.
cheers
Click to expand...
If you put your HDD in the optibay it will be SATA2 (3gbps). If you put your hard disk drive (hdd) in the optibay, you will not notice any speed difference as a conventional hard drive isn't fast enough to show any improvement between SATA2 and SATA3. An SSD that supports SATA3, however, will be faster in the SATA3 position (original hdd bay).
 
NikFinn said:
If you put your HDD in the optibay it will be SATA2 (3gbps). If you put your hard disk drive (hdd) in the optibay, you will not notice any speed difference as a conventional hard drive isn't fast enough to show any improvement between SATA2 and SATA3. An SSD that supports SATA3, however, will be faster in the SATA3 position (original hdd bay).
Click to expand...

I check the specifications for my TOSHIBA MK5065GSXF.. i found Sata2 for this device....
so i'm not going to have any diference if i put it in place of my superdrive, even it's sata2 or sata3.. right?
 
Your hard drive is SATAII, just like every other hard drive on the market. Doesn't matter where you put it.

And that's fine, because not only are hard drives (that means every hard drive) not able to saturate SATAIII bandwidth limits, they don't even saturate SATAII bandwidth.
 
Why didn't you just buy a 240gb SSD and keep the optical drive or use a cheapo hdd instead?

Why would you ever want to use 2x120gb SSD's? I just don't get it.
 
There any jumpers on the drive that could define the bus connection used? Some previous 2.5" HDD had jumper settings that would force 1.5 or 3.0 if the autodetect failed. It's possible you could set a jumper and force 3.0 here.
 
surjavarman said:
Why didn't you just buy a 240gb SSD and keep the optical drive or use a cheapo hdd instead?

Why would you ever want to use 2x120gb SSD's? I just don't get it.
Click to expand...

Running 2 separate drives in a RAID0 configuration gives you almost double the speed of a single drive. People who have successfully run 2 Vertex 3 MAX IOPS SSDs like the ones I bought have reported 1000 MB/sec speeds.
 
Last edited:
Fry-man22 said:
There any jumpers on the drive that could define the bus connection used? Some previous 2.5" HDD had jumper settings that would force 1.5 or 3.0 if the autodetect failed. It's possible you could set a jumper and force 3.0 here.
Click to expand...

No jumpers on the SSDs. In fact, I haven't seen jumpers on hard drives now for years. I don't think they exist anymore.
 
FWIW, the other SSD in the hard drive bay is operating perfectly at 6 Gigabits. I sleep it, wake it up, put it through some pretty touch conditions . . . Flawless, not a single stutter or beach ball . . .

So it appears that at least Apple got the disk0 problems fixed with the latest builds of the 15 inch MBPs (mine was built in June). If only the other SSD would do the same!
 
I think my problem may be relevant

mid-2010 macbook pro i7, updated to Lion

Now i have a

Intel 320 ssd ( INTEL SSDSA2CW300G3 ) in the main bay.
Apple ssd (APPLE SSD TS128B ) in the optical bay.

The 2nd bay has major issues (can't write to it, can't delete, can't unmount)

If i switch these 2 drives, I have the same issue.

Any thoughts on this?
 
RyeRyeRye said:
No jumpers on the SSDs. In fact, I haven't seen jumpers on hard drives now for years. I don't think they exist anymore.
Click to expand...

Wow - you haven't been looking as they never went anywhere on 2.5' HDD and from the google images search you can see that the Kingston, Toshiba, OCZ all have jumpers on them...

http://www.google.com/search?q=SSD+...&source=og&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi&biw=1242&bih=720

And here's a link to a Vertex user stating that they can't get their BOIS to recognize the drive WITHOUT a jumper.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/f...solved-Vertex-only-recognized-if-jumper-is-on

You may want to do more reading before you dismiss suggestions like you know better...
 

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