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step by step guide to set SSD as boot only drive?

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butters149

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 22, 2009
296
0
Hi,

Is there a step by step guide somewhere to show how I can put a 2nd drive which would be a small SSD drive to boot only for bootcamp and OSX?
 
If your going to use one of the 4 bays using a 3.5 inch drive, just plug it in, initialize it, use disk utility to make 2 partitions. Then if you want, you can clone your current OS X to one of the partitions. Go from there. Never used the optical bays so someone else will have to chime in. What kind of SSD will you be using and where are you putting it?
 
Sorry I should have been more specific, I have a late 2009 macbook pro unibody 15" with 2.8 gigz, 4gb DDR3 and 500GB HD

I want to use the MCE Optibay which is a bracket for mounting a HD in the optical drive location. I want to put the SSD as my primary boot up drive for both windows and osx and use the 500GB as storage mainly. I am thinking about the Intel X-25 80GB but not sure if that will be enough for both OS.
 
butters149 said:
Sorry I should have been more specific, I have a late 2009 macbook pro unibody 15" with 2.8 gigz, 4gb DDR3 and 500GB HD

I want to use the MCE Optibay which is a bracket for mounting a HD in the optical drive location. I want to put the SSD as my primary boot up drive for both windows and osx and use the 500GB as storage mainly. I am thinking about the Intel X-25 80GB but not sure if that will be enough for both OS.
Click to expand...

80GB will be way more than enough for both OS's.
 
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So once you have both the SSD and a Harddrive in, you'd expect the battery life to decrease. Is this true OP?

Also, IF it was true, and say, I was travelling on an airplane for 14 hours at a time, is there a way to "shut off" the HDD? Is it even worth the trouble?
 
What you have to do, is move all of your user's folders into the optibay.

Once you have Snow Leopard installed and running fine in the SSD, go over to the optibay drive, and format it/partition it as you wish.

Create directories in there, such as Downloads, Music, Documents, Pictures. Move all of your data that is currently in the SSD in those folders, into the Optibay drive.

Create a new admin account, log on as this new user.

In your optibay drive, create Aliases/softlinks for the folders you created by right clicking, in say, Documents -> Make Alias. You can now drag this alias into your User.

Now, everytime you download something, or access your photos/data, the softlink will redirect to your optibay drive.

And yes, if you don't use the data in your optibay drive, it will go to sleep after a while (provided you have set that up in Energy Saver preferences).
 
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Thanks for clearing that up!
 
SO you dont move your user file into the HDD, just link the main folders? I know mac os doesnt like you messing with the user folder but you're ok to move all of the data inside of the main folders onto the HDD?
 
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