SSD in Optibay or HDD bay

A

ArmanUV

macrumors member
I ordered a 15" MBP and a OWC 6G Electra SSD with Data Doubler yesterday and while waiting for them to arrive :cool:, I have a few questions about the installation of the SSD:
1. According to this OWC blog post, a SATA III drive in the optical bay of 15" MBPs is a no go. Can anybody confirm if this problem is still present in Lion? Shouldn't Apple have fixed this by now?
2. Let's say I put the SSD in the main HDD bay and the stock hard drive,which is 7200rpm by the way, in the optibay. Is it true that OS X can not put the non-boot drives in sleep mode? How is this drive going to affect battery life?
3. Do I need the keep the motion sensor on with this setup?
 
I would like to hear some information regarding this topic as well. Is it true that OS X can't sleep that second drive? I recently installed a the same OWC ssd in my new 17inch MBP and used the data doubler to move the 7200rpm hhd to the optibay.
 
I ran 128Gb C300 via Data Doubler and HD in original spot for a month before I upgraded, and had absolutely no problems. I know that the SATA 3 SSDs can be hit or miss in optical drive bay for 15" MBPs, but there are many success stories :)

The only issue I know of is that you cannot save the RAM state in the even of the power failure - when the MBP wakes up from sleep on low battery to write the RAM to HD to hibernate, it does not see the SSD, and won't write to a secondary HD. I have it disabled, and it's all good.
 
polbit said:
I ran 128Gb C300 via Data Doubler and HD in original spot for a month before I upgraded, and had absolutely no problems. I know that the SATA 3 SSDs can be hit or miss in optical drive bay for 15" MBPs, but there are many success stories :)

The only issue I know of is that you cannot save the RAM state in the even of the power failure - when the MBP wakes up from sleep on low battery to write the RAM to HD to hibernate, it does not see the SSD, and won't write to a secondary HD. I have it disabled, and it's all good.
Click to expand...

So basically this is what it comes down to:

SSD in mainbay(boot), HD in optibay >
PRO: No sleep problems, Reliable 6GB/s speeds
CON: Motion sensor disabled for HD, Sleep disabled for HD (?)

SSD in optibay(boot), HD in mainbay >
PRO: Motion sensor enabled for HD
CON: possible instability with SATAIII SSDs, Sleep disabled for HD (?), Sleep problems(fixable?)

If the sleep problem could be fixed somehow, I can make my peace with the lack of motion sensor. I won't be storing any sensitive info on the HD and as far as I know, lots of laptops don't even have this feature.
It'd be nice if somebody could confirm this conclusion.
 
I am awaiting the delivery of my optibay and would like to hear from others as well. My plan is to use a SATA II SSD in the optibay spot and run a large HDD in the factory spot.

Reasoning being that the factory HDD slot has been said to have better mounting points to deal with the vibration from the rotating drive.

There are a lot of things to consider with the optibay upgrade.

Which SSD, which HDD, where to purchase each and where to put each, which optibay to use, TRIM hacks, scripts to spin down the HDD, sudden motion sensor enable/disable, sleep & hibernate/safe sleep compatibility.

I am planning the Samsung 1 TB 9.5 mm in HDD slot, nimitz optibay from ebay, Intel 320 or Samsung 470 SSD in optibay, TRIM hack enabled, work on sleeping the HDD once everything is up and running, and hibernate/sleep with boot drive in the optibay I am still unsure. Anyone have information on that portion?
 
Don't know about 15" but on my 13" I'm running a hybrid in the HDD bay and a 1TB drive in the optibay and the optibay disk most definitely does sleep correctly. The drop sensor is a bit moot, most drives have their own built in and are very shock resistant as is, in addition laptops have been fine without drop sensors for about two decades before they were invented.

I'll be using my SSD in the HDD bay when it gets here today.
 
Well that's a relief. With no sleep issues, I'm all set to try this setup.
Now,my only concern is installing Windows 7 on the optibay HD. The only way I can think off is to open the MBP, replace the HD with the optical drive, partition with bootcamp, open it up again, put the HD in the mainbay and the optical drive in its place, install win7, open it up for the 3rd time, put the SSD and the HD in and the power it back on! :eek:

Does anybody know of a solution that doesn't involve opening the poor thing 3 times?
 
ArmanUV said:
SSD in mainbay(boot), HD in optibay >
PRO: No sleep problems, Reliable 6GB/s speeds
Click to expand...

My understanding is there was an issue with getting 6Gb/s when the 2011 MacBook Pro came out. Can you confirm that SATA III in the main bay is A-OK?
 
bLiss said:
My understanding is there was an issue with getting 6Gb/s when the 2011 MacBook Pro came out. Can you confirm that SATA III in the main bay is A-OK?
Click to expand...

I'm still waiting for mine to arrive but according to OWC (link in first post) and some success stories here on macrumors, SATAIII drives in the mainbay are 100% reliable in the 15" line. Apple quietly updated the optical bay SATA connection to 6GB/s but the reliability has left something to be desired. The 17" on the other hand, is all messed up in both the main and the optibay. Some people even tried shielding or replacing the SATA cable with no luck for the most part.
 
Does anybody know if setting hard drives to sleep after a few minutes affects the boot SSD? it seems that OS X doesn't allow setting this value for each drive.
 
Last edited:
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