SSD installation into optical drive troubles...

[iDragster]

Hello everyone,

I bought last week a new macbook pro 13', with also the samsung SSD 840 120Gb and the caddy adapter kit (http://www.amazon.it/Apple-Macbook-...46094&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=adapter+ssd+candy)

The idea is to replace the optical drive with the SSD, and then move the actual installation on top of it (moving on the traditional HDD only movies, pictures and some other large files). I found different guides on internet: the one from iFixit (http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Dual+Hard+Drive/13787/1) which explains how to open and change the optical drive, others which explains the list of step to have a system installed and working on top of SSD.

What I made, was:

1. Update the firmware of the SSD to the latest version
2. Attach the SSD with USB cable to the macbook, then format it with Mac osx extended journaled file system
3. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact copy of the main HDD on top of the SSD
4. Try to boot from the SSD attached as external device (with USB, as I said above). It works!
5. Mount the SSD in place of the optical drive
6. At the next boot, select the SSD drive to boot from (which has the same name of the main drive, Macintosh HD; I had to try two times in order to select the right ones). The system starts loading but it "freeze" on the grey screen with apple symbol (while the loading circle continue to rotate indefinitely). I forced the system to shutdown, then retried again but without chance to load from OS. Normal HDD installation works as normal. The boot menu now show the main HDD with the right name, the second as "Macintosh HD 1" (if I remember well)
7. Try with Startup Disk utility to select the SSD as starting boot disk, but the following error appears: "You can’t change the startup disk to the selected disk. The bless tool was unable to set the current boot disk.".
8. Try also to make a fresh installation of OSX on the SSD, from the recover partition of the same device, but an error appears and the installation exited.

What I don't understand is why the system boot well using the SSD as external device, while doesn't work using it in place of the optical drive. More, I'm currently disappointed from the strange errors it gives to me, and don't know how to proceed….

Help me

 

[johnnnw]

I've read a bunch of times here people not being able to boot from the optical drive.

I think you need to switch them and put the SSD in the main bay

 

[lloyd709]

There was a problem with the 2011 15 inch MBPs running 6Gb SSDs in the the optical bay - they could run 3Gb ones OK but not 6Gb - however, the 13 inch models worked fine. I'm sure I read somewhere that this situation has reversed with the newer models with the 15 inch modes working fine but the 13 inch models not. You might want to google this!

 

[iDragster]

I googled a lot in the last days, and what I found is a lot of misleading informations...some days before I bought the macbook pro and all the other things I read on different pages where they say the macbook pro mid 2012 version have no problem both with 6Gb/s device as well as with boot device.

From the System information utility, the link speed and the negotiated link speed appears to be both 6Gb/s.

 

[TheSlimOne]

I had the exact issue bud. Look at my previous post.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/17009239/

Although it is about trying to setup a dual boot deal. I ended up have sort of the same issue. Trying to get ML to boot from the SSD in the optical bay was a PITA. I could get it to, but it didn't want to. It wouldn't let me set it as the 'boot drive'

BOOTCAMP apparently will only install to a drive in the main bay. So I had to partition my SSD and I put the 500g HDD in the optical bay and split it in half to be a data drive for both ML and windows.

It works. It isn't how I wanted but it does work. Although everybody says it should work the other way. It sure wouldn't for me

 

[iDragster]

I'm not sure the dual boot problem is something related with my problem (even if you could be right...). Today I tried to format the SSD, but the OS give me this error each time I try to format/repartition/erase it. The message it gives to me is the following:

Wiping volume data to prevent future accidental probing failed.

The same error appears if I try to do the operation from the recovery partition, and also from an external DVD with mountain lion image on top of it.

Have you any idea on how to proceed ? I cannot think the same system works well to someone and don't work to others...

 

[iDragster]

I had to switch the HDD with the SSD, and now it works. It's a pity, because this way I lose all the benefits of having the HDD in its place (e.g. sudden motion sensor, etc etc).

 

[TheSlimOne]

I had to switch the HDD with the SSD, and now it works. It's a pity, because this way I lose all the benefits of having the HDD in its place (e.g. sudden motion sensor, etc etc).

Yes.. This. I never could get the darn thing to work properly when the SSD was in the optical location. When I switched it all was/is flawless.

 

[negativzero]

Hello everyone,

I bought last week a new macbook pro 13', with also the samsung SSD 840 120Gb and the caddy adapter kit (http://www.amazon.it/Apple-Macbook-...46094&sr=8-1-fkmr0&keywords=adapter+ssd+candy)

The idea is to replace the optical drive with the SSD, and then move the actual installation on top of it (moving on the traditional HDD only movies, pictures and some other large files). I found different guides on internet: the one from iFixit (http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Installing+MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2012+Dual+Hard+Drive/13787/1) which explains how to open and change the optical drive, others which explains the list of step to have a system installed and working on top of SSD.

What I made, was:

1. Update the firmware of the SSD to the latest version
2. Attach the SSD with USB cable to the macbook, then format it with Mac osx extended journaled file system
3. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to make an exact copy of the main HDD on top of the SSD
4. Try to boot from the SSD attached as external device (with USB, as I said above). It works!
5. Mount the SSD in place of the optical drive
6. At the next boot, select the SSD drive to boot from (which has the same name of the main drive, Macintosh HD; I had to try two times in order to select the right ones). The system starts loading but it "freeze" on the grey screen with apple symbol (while the loading circle continue to rotate indefinitely). I forced the system to shutdown, then retried again but without chance to load from OS. Normal HDD installation works as normal. The boot menu now show the main HDD with the right name, the second as "Macintosh HD 1" (if I remember well)
7. Try with Startup Disk utility to select the SSD as starting boot disk, but the following error appears: "You can’t change the startup disk to the selected disk. The bless tool was unable to set the current boot disk.".
8. Try also to make a fresh installation of OSX on the SSD, from the recover partition of the same device, but an error appears and the installation exited.

What I don't understand is why the system boot well using the SSD as external device, while doesn't work using it in place of the optical drive. More, I'm currently disappointed from the strange errors it gives to me, and don't know how to proceed….

Help me

I had the same problem as you and it's a problem with the optical caddy. The moment I switched to a OWC data doubler the problems went away.

 

[wonderspark]

Thought I'd share my experiences with booting from the optical bay side in my 2012 15" cMBP:

I have a Samsung 840 Pro in the regular drive bay, and a Crucial M4 in the optical bay, using the OWC Data Doubler caddy. Both are 256GB SSDs.

I cloned the drives, and can boot from either one. Both show link speed AND negotiated link speeds at 6Gb. Both have TRIM enabled with the Trim Enabler 2.2 app. I should add that both SSDs are clones from the original 500GB HDD, not fresh installs. I used the SuperDuper! app.

These are BlackMagic and AJA System Test benchmark screenshots. You can see they both run close to or in some cases faster than their advertised speeds. The Samsung 840 Pro is on the current firmware as of today, and the Crucial is on version 0309. (I never updated that one past that, because it fixed the "5000 hour bug" and always ran perfectly in my Mac Pro and two MacBook Pros.)

You can tell which test is which by the speeds, but the AJA tests have M4 in the Crucial SSD test, and Prefect in the Samsung SSD test. (Named after a character in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy... not a misspelling of 'perfect'.)

As you can plainly see, the 2012 15" Classic MacBook Pro can boot at full speeds from either location without any problems with the OWC caddy. I currently boot from the M4 in the OWC caddy.

 

[wonderspark]

Screenshots showing link speed and TRIM support all working as well.