I'm looking at buying a 15" 2011 MacBook Pro. I already have a 512 gig SSD at the moment split in half between OS X and Windows. I'm thinking of going the OptiBay route since I rarely ever use my optical drive anymore and I have an external DVD drive anyway.
My thought was to configure the new MBP with a 256 gig SSD from Apple, since that's been more than enough space for me under OS X so far. The current SSD is one from OWC and I know going forward that TRIM won't be easily supported on non-Apple supplied SSDs, so that's part of my consideration in just getting one from them directly.
That leaves the 512 SSD to myself, and I was thinking of using the OptiBay for this and dedicating the entire drive to Windows. I only use my Windows partition for gaming, so I'd rather have more space there in order to take advantage of the higher horsepower that the larger machine will provide.
So my questions to those of you who have experiences with OptiBay are:
1) Does the OptiBay support this setup? Specifically, will I still be able to install to and boot from Windows on a second HD exactly the same way as I can between two partitions right now?
2) What effect will this have on battery life? I use the OS X partition primarily (including on battery) but I'm only on Windows if I'm playing a game, which means attached to a plug. Is it going to still be leeching power under OS X even if I'm not doing anything with the drive? I still need this laptop under OS X to have as close to the same battery life as possible so if it's going to have a noticeable impact I'll keep it to the same 512 gig SSD split in half like now (and shave $700 off the cost in the process, but I digress.)
My thought was to configure the new MBP with a 256 gig SSD from Apple, since that's been more than enough space for me under OS X so far. The current SSD is one from OWC and I know going forward that TRIM won't be easily supported on non-Apple supplied SSDs, so that's part of my consideration in just getting one from them directly.
That leaves the 512 SSD to myself, and I was thinking of using the OptiBay for this and dedicating the entire drive to Windows. I only use my Windows partition for gaming, so I'd rather have more space there in order to take advantage of the higher horsepower that the larger machine will provide.
So my questions to those of you who have experiences with OptiBay are:
1) Does the OptiBay support this setup? Specifically, will I still be able to install to and boot from Windows on a second HD exactly the same way as I can between two partitions right now?
2) What effect will this have on battery life? I use the OS X partition primarily (including on battery) but I'm only on Windows if I'm playing a game, which means attached to a plug. Is it going to still be leeching power under OS X even if I'm not doing anything with the drive? I still need this laptop under OS X to have as close to the same battery life as possible so if it's going to have a noticeable impact I'll keep it to the same 512 gig SSD split in half like now (and shave $700 off the cost in the process, but I digress.)