Questions on Second Hard Drive Bay Installation on Macbook Pro 15"

[Hyde244]

Hello all,

Like many I am always toying around with the notion of removing my optical drive in favor of a second HD bay. At present I am running a 1 TB Seagate hybrid drive, and would love the prospect of installing a second HD for storage. Better yet, installing an SSD to further improve read-write speeds as a bootable drive, using the 1 TB as a storage drive for files and apps.

However looking over the iFixIt Unibody Laptop Dual Drive kit, there is a bullet that cites a 750 GB max on HD space: https://www.ifixit.com/Apple-Parts/9-5-mm-SATA-Optical-Bay-SATA-Hard-Drive-Enclosure/IF107-080-1

This sparks two questions:

1. Are there any Dual Drive kits that support a 1 TB hard drive?

2. I have also heard that the SATA speeds for the optical drive connection are less than that of the main hard drive SATA connection. Is this true? (If so, I would imaginatively want to place a prospective SSD into the hard drive bay, bumping a traditional HD to the optical bay to match lower speeds)

Just trying to gauge what options there are - thanks everyone for the insight!

 

[JTToft]

1. Are there any Dual Drive kits that support a 1 TB hard drive?

- Yes. The OWC Data Doubler.

2. I have also heard that the SATA speeds for the optical drive connection are less than that of the main hard drive SATA connection. Is this true?

- Not for your model, assuming you mean Mid 2012 and not Early 2012 (which doesn't exist).
The Mid 2012 15" MBP has 6.0 Gbps SATA in both bays. You might even do well by having your SSD in the optical bay and hard drive in the main bay to take advantage of the Sudden Motion Sensor for your hard drive.

 

[Hyde244]

Thanks for the response JTToft! You are correct, typo on my part - this is a mid-2012. Also great point on the SMS for the hard drive bay - had totally forgotten about that, which makes sense to keep the physical drive under that protection.

 

[JTToft]

Thanks for the response JTToft! You are correct, typo on my part - this is a mid-2012. Also great point on the SMS for the hard drive bay - had totally forgotten about that, which makes sense to keep the physical drive under that protection.

- No problem. Enjoy your setup!

The lower speeds in the optical bay applies to some 2011 machines - among them mine, unfortunately.