Questions related to Macbook Pro mid-2012 Upgrade to SSD

[xalmansh]

Hello,

I am looking forward to upgrade my 500 GB HDD drive to 120 GB SSD and change my optical SUPER DVD Drive into a Caddy Tray and put my HDD over there.

1) Will the cheapest SSD by kingston or WD Green serve my purpose? I do some gaming, light designing and watch videos. What should one look for in an SSD other than an affordable price?

2) I have heard about some problems with SSD being in the DVD Caddy section where the disk gets ejected after few weeks and then you need a complete shutdown to bring back the drive on the screen. Why does this happen?

3) What happens when you hit the disk eject button on the MBP while you have the HDD in the DVD Disk Caddy?

4) When installing an application or a software on Mac, does it give an option to choose what hard disk i want the software to be installed on? This is because I don't want my main drive with the macOS to be filled with anything but the macOS.

5) What is the best option? Putting the SSD in the DVD Drive caddy or in the main HDD drive bay?

6) Can the MBP boot from the SSD in the DVD Drive Caddy or the macOS needs to be installed only in the main drive bay?


Hoping for a quick response!
Thanks.

 

[Ploki]

1 yes
2 never heard of it or had it happen
3 it gets ejected. you can remount it in disk utility. its detected as another internal drive, just like in multidrive macs such as mac pro 2006-2012
4 not always possible (not all apps ask or allow to be installed on a nonsystem drive.)
5 shouldnt matter, both are sata3 ports
6 yes. mac can boot macos even from usb external drive, this is just another internal so no issues.

i had 2 identical drives in 2008 unibody in a raid0 setup - 0 issues

 

[xalmansh]

1 yes
2 never heard of it or had it happen
3 it gets ejected. you can remount it in disk utility. its detected as another internal drive, just like in multidrive macs such as mac pro 2006-2012
4 not always possible (not all apps ask or allow to be installed on a nonsystem drive.)
5 shouldnt matter, both are sata3 ports
6 yes. mac can boot macos even from usb external drive, this is just another internal so no issues.

i had 2 identical drives in 2008 unibody in a raid0 setup - 0 issues

Thanks for the reply,

2) there has been reported issues about the hard drive being ejected and I am sort of skeptical about my upgrade because of this. You can read more here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5419808 and here https://apple.stackexchange.com/que...bp-optical-caddy-keep-unmounting-when-writing

4) is there no work around for this? that way I may end up filling up my SSD with softwares and have my 1 TB HDD lying literally empty.

5) Both may be sata 3 ports but isn't one of them faster that the other? Please check the attached images below. It says under system report for SATA/SATA Express that the negotiated link speed for one drive is 6 Gb while the other is 3 Gb. I do not understand this fully.

I also found this on another forum on this website:

Testing has demonstrated that Apple factory hardware does not reliably support a 6G (6Gb/s) Solid State Drive or Hard Disk Drive in the optical bay of 2011 and 2012 MacBook Pros (Model ID 8,1; 8,2; 8,3; 9,1; 9,2). If your OWC Data Doubler bundle comes with a 6G drive, you should ONLY install that drive in the main drive bay and utilize the Data Doubler to re-task your existing drive or install a new 3G SSD or HDD in the optical bay. PRE-2011 models can utilize a 6G drive in the optical bay, but will do so at a reduced 3G (3Gb/s) speed.

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/DDAMBS0GB/

6) If a HDD or SSD is installed with the macOS in any of the drive bays, does the mac boot from the drive automatically by recognizing where the OSx is installed or we need to configure that like they do it in the BIOS in PCs

 

[cobracnvt]

I have a 2012 MB Pro 15. Here is what I did. I replaced the main HDD with a 1TB Samsung 850 evo SDD and left the CD drive alone. The Samsung 860 1TB SSD was $127 last week on Amazon. I get around 470 MBps accesing the SSD and have had no problems over several years with it. I put the old HDD in an external USB 3 drive case for $10 and plug it into USB when needed.

 

[xalmansh]

I have a 2012 MB Pro 15. Here is what I did. I replaced the main HDD with a 1TB Samsung 850 evo SDD and left the CD drive alone. The Samsung 860 1TB SSD was $127 last week on Amazon. I get around 470 MBps accesing the SSD and have had no problems over several years with it. I put the old HDD in an external USB 3 drive case for $10 and plug it into USB when needed.

That's great but carrying a separate HDD with cable is sort of a logistics issue for me along with a mid-2012 already super heavy laptop. I would still look forward for a more fail-proof solution in this case. Any suggestions?

 

[cobracnvt]

How much can you spend and how much storage do you really need to have attached 100% of the time?