Replacing optical drive with SSD - Battery Life, Looks, Thoughts?

[kauff]

After reading a few threads on the subject here, I'm thinking of replacing the optical drive in my 2010 MBP with a SSD.

I was thinking of what disadvantages it might have. So, for the people here who have taken the plunge: has your battery life suffered? Does the computer run hotter? What does the former optical drive look like from the outside, could you take a picture?

Thanks a lot in advance

 

[schemula]

I am interested in this as well. Esp does the HD go to sleep and need to be woken up constantly when doing finder things?

 

[shelhed217]

Interested here as well, and what practical difference is there in SATA 2 vs 3? I planned on putting the OS and a game or two on the SSD drive. TIA

 

[rgarjr]

Ive been running with a HD in a caddy and SSD in the HD bay for a few years now, no problems. Matter of fact I'm going to upgrade my 250GB to 1TB.
Go for it.

 

[Blue Sun]

Ive been running with a HD in a caddy and SSD in the HD bay for a few years now, no problems. Matter of fact I'm going to upgrade my 250GB to 1TB.
Go for it.

How's the battery life?

Anyway to unmount the secondary HDD when not needed?

 

[kauff]

Ive been running with a HD in a caddy and SSD in the HD bay for a few years now, no problems. Matter of fact I'm going to upgrade my 250GB to 1TB.
Go for it.

Would you mind taking a pic of the side of the macbook? Can you see the caddy at all?

 

[LSUtigers03]

I replaced my super drive with an SSD and I have my HDD in the hard drive slot. Battery life has been fine so far. Saturday I used my computer all day and I got around 7 hours out of it.

 

[polbit]

I have had no issues whatsover with my SSD in the optical bay. Love the setup.

As far as looks, you can't tell at all from the outside. Can't take a pix as I'm at work right now.

 

[Biff...]

I just purchased the Maxupgrades.com kit, with a scorpio black 750gb hardrive, I plan on running my SSD as my boot drive, and the hard drive in the optical bay.

 

[awer25]

I've not had any drop in battery or heat issues, and externally the laptop looks the exact same, so there's no need for a picture.

 

[riptideMBP]

I got about 10 min extra battery when after installing the SSD over the course of around 5 and a half hours. As the other users said, it looks exactly the same from the outside.

EDIT: Also as far as keeping the drive spun down, make sure nothing is checking the disk's smart status (such as istat). You can also set the disk to go to sleep faster in terminal with something such as "sudo pmset -a spindown 1" (0 is never sleep, integers represent time in minutes).

 

[kauff]

Thank you guys, you have all been very helpful