i have a 15" MacBook Pro Late 2011, and i want to put 2 SSD's in it. is that possible? and how well does it work?
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replace dvd drive with an SSD?
- Thread starter firelighter487
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it currently has the original ssd from when it was made in it i believe, and it's only 120gb if i'm correct.. could be 128.. anyway not enough for me at all. i have 2 spare 240gb ssd's so i want to put both in. i already have them so this to me seems like the best solution.
i do have a 2TB external hdd, but that's a slow mechanical drive. it's not fast enough for me because i need to run virtual machines. and running those on a usb mechanical hdd is really slow. so that drive will be used for backups.
and i want to try RAID-0 ssd's for giggles. if i can get that to work that'd be awesome.
so do i need to get some kind of caddy? and how well will that second drive perform if i do this?
1st drive slow is SATA3, 2nd drive slot (DVD) is SATA2, it is not worth putting an SSD in the 2nd slot. Put a fast SSD in the 1st and a large HDD in the 2nd.
ssd's in sata 2 machines are worth it absolutely. I think you've never used an ssd on sata 2. yes it's not as fast as sata 3 but not slow as well. and that speed difference doesn't bother me at all. I can't notice the difference with everyday use to be honest.
mikzn
macrumors 68040
Yeah 120 g is not much - just enough for the system to run - an evo 850 (500g) is a great easy SSD replacement - FYI I did the same thing on my mid 2012 MBP and it works great and has plenty of storage.
I thought about replacing the super drive with a second SSD - but opted for keeping the drive to have a CD/DVD drive available. That said hard drive caddies to fit the super drive space are not expensive.
I agree with you, the speed difference would hard to notice, not sure about the RAID working in that set up but it would be interesting.
As has been mentioned, you usually can't get SATA3 speeds with the optical port in the 2011 MBP. MCE Technologies has something called the "OptiBay Extreme" which claims to get SATA3 on the 2011 MBP. It's $49 which is quite a bit less than the last time I looked it up.
https://store.mcetech.com/mm/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=OBSXGB-XTRM
However, I'd be careful with this. I don't see this on Amazon (their regular OptiBay is) and you should do a search on the product and vendor before getting this.
I have RAID0 on my mid-2012 13" MBP. In my experience, the only use case where you will have a noticeable difference is where you have to copy a file on the RAID0 SSD's. So I have an app where there is a function where it more or less does that and it's faster than my 2014 Mini which has the same software doing the same task on a single SSD. However, in doing a bunch of tests with a database app I have, there was no consistent performance gain - that was a use case I would have expected to see some performance gain but didn't. If you like showing high Blackmagic Disk Test scores to people, then install RAID0. However, I don't think it's a good idea unless you can get consistent SATA3 performance from both ports.
https://store.mcetech.com/mm/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=OBSXGB-XTRM
However, I'd be careful with this. I don't see this on Amazon (their regular OptiBay is) and you should do a search on the product and vendor before getting this.
I have RAID0 on my mid-2012 13" MBP. In my experience, the only use case where you will have a noticeable difference is where you have to copy a file on the RAID0 SSD's. So I have an app where there is a function where it more or less does that and it's faster than my 2014 Mini which has the same software doing the same task on a single SSD. However, in doing a bunch of tests with a database app I have, there was no consistent performance gain - that was a use case I would have expected to see some performance gain but didn't. If you like showing high Blackmagic Disk Test scores to people, then install RAID0. However, I don't think it's a good idea unless you can get consistent SATA3 performance from both ports.