Requesting advice on SSD install/Optical bay stock HD swap

[beedoola]

I have a early 2011 13'' MBP. Has a 500gb HD stock. I'm eying/planning on getting a Samsung 830 series 256gb drive (maybe the 128). I also plan on swapping out the optical drive and getting an omni bay to house the stock HD.

My first question is; should I even remove the stock drive and put the new SSD in its place, or should I leave the stock drive there and put the SSD in the Optical drives place? Does it matter either way? I can still enable the SSD as the boot drive in the end right?

Also, what is the best way to go about cloning my original HD? I'm a musician and use Ableton Live and I don't want to loose any of my recordings/Live sets.

If putting the SSD in the stock HD position is the best procedure, can I just put the SSD in, and the original HD in the optibay and then do a clone upon boot from there?

 

[beedoola]

anyone please?

 

[user418]

I seem to recall reading that there are problems with having the SSD in the optibay as the boot drive. You'd want to swap the SSD for the HDD and put the HDD in the optibay.

Also, I'd probably use CCC to clone the HDD to the SSD via USB, FireWire, or eSATA prior to installation. Just in case there is some unforeseen problem you won't have to open up the MBP again.

 

[m4tic]

When I first fired up my MBP, I went straight to the option key boot menu>disk utility and simply used the restore function from old drive to new drive. I then swapped in the ssd, turned it back on and went through out of box setup.

 

[Rajpdx]

I have a early 2011 13'' MBP. Has a 500gb HD stock. I'm eying/planning on getting a Samsung 830 series 256gb drive (maybe the 128). I also plan on swapping out the optical drive and getting an omni bay to house the stock HD.

My first question is; should I even remove the stock drive and put the new SSD in its place, or should I leave the stock drive there and put the SSD in the Optical drives place? Does it matter either way? I can still enable the SSD as the boot drive in the end right?

Also, what is the best way to go about cloning my original HD? I'm a musician and use Ableton Live and I don't want to loose any of my recordings/Live sets.

If putting the SSD in the stock HD position is the best procedure, can I just put the SSD in, and the original HD in the optibay and then do a clone upon boot from there?

Keep the SSD in the main bay. You can't put a SATAIII drive in the optical bay - it will prevent your machine from running.

If you put the current drive in the Optical Bay and the SSD in the main bay and restart the machine it will still boot from the drive in the Optical Bay as that will still be the only one with an OS on it. Alternatively press option as you boot up and pick that drive. Then from that install you can use disk utility to format the SSD and then use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper to clone to the SSD - or Install OSX on the SSD as a new install, boot from that and then use migration assistant to import from the drive in the Optical Bay.

Good luck.