Quick question

[deehow]

I want to replace the optical drive in my macbook pro 2011.
my question is, do caddy do anything besides hold the drive in place?
say i wanted to put a drive in my macbook without a caddy for like
3 days, would it work if i just did it ghetto and taped it in or does
the caddy make it so the macbook pro recognizes its a hard drive
and not a super drive ?

 

[treekram]

No, the connector for the SuperDrive is different than the standard SATA connector. Search for "13 pin slimline SATA male to 22 pin SATA female [cable or adapter]". Take a look at:
http://www.amazon.com/Slimline-SATA-Female-Cable-Adapter/dp/B003YVP8VS
Look in the comments section - a user "Big Fudge" has a photo of what he did to make it work (that photo scares me). There are caddy's that are cheaper than this particular cable but obviously the two places that one can cut costs is in the quality of the caddy framework and the adapter so buyer beware.

There may also be a part that connects from the logic board to a standard SATA connector but I haven't looked into that. It's probably more expensive than either a caddy or the adapter.

 

[squarebreathing]

Just a thought: get an external optical drive. They run around $20. You don't need the Apple one: the LG models and many others work fine on apple products.