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Swap SSD and HDD Position

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BillGrates

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 10, 2013
7
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I have an Early 2011 MBP and I put my own Fusion Drive in it. At the time I set it up I thought that my MBP only had one SATA III port, but upon looking up more information about it I found that my MBP has 2 SATA III ports.
Since my HDD would be more secure in its original location, I was wondering if there was any way to reassign where my HDD and SSD are?

Thanks!
 
BillGrates said:
I have an Early 2011 MBP and I put my own Fusion Drive in it. At the time I set it up I thought that my MBP only had one SATA III port, but upon looking up more information about it I found that my MBP has 2 SATA III ports.
Since my HDD would be more secure in its original location, I was wondering if there was any way to reassign where my HDD and SSD are?

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I don't think you need to do anything via the software side. Just physically swapping the drives should work.
 
Getting a grey spinning icon. I booted into recovery and tried to repair the disk, but that didn't seem to help. Any other ideas?
 
BillGrates said:
Getting a grey spinning icon. I booted into recovery and tried to repair the disk, but that didn't seem to help. Any other ideas?
Click to expand...
Have you tried to select the correct boot drive on startup? Keep Option key down while doing a cold boot.
PS Mac keeps the location of bootfile in it's NVRAM. Upon successful launch of OS X go to system preferences and select correct Startup disk, that will update the designation in NVRAM.
 
The 2011 MBP's have known issues with SSD's in the optical bay. Put the SSD in the main bay and the HDD in the optical bay.

Per OWC:

Testing has demonstrated that Apple factory hardware does not reliably support a 6G (6Gb/s) Solid State Drive or Hard Disk Drive in the optical bay of 2011 MacBook Pros (ModeI ID8,1; 8,2; 8,3). If your OWC Data Doubler bundle comes with a 6G drive, you should ONLY install that drive in the main drive bay and utilize the Data Doubler to re-task your existing drive or install a new 3G SSD or HDD in the optical bay. PRE-2011 models can utilize a 6G drive in the optical bay, but will do so at a reduced 3G (3Gb/s) speed.
 
I've reset the PRAM, NVRAM, PWM, and I've also tried a safe boot. I ended up saying ot heck with it and put them back where I had them, added some foam in the DVD drive slot and it booted right up.

I should note that Black Magic Disk Speed Test shows my write speed no higher than 100 MBPS, but my read speed is up to 400 MBPS. Is this just the test messing up? My MBP is very fast still.
 

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400MB/s read speed looks just fine and definitely nothing SATA 2 can do.
SATA is also serial and unidirectional so it shouldn't matter whether it is reading or writing.

Any chance you are using a small SSD and those write speeds are normal.
Small SSD write much slower yet read speeds usually are okay.

For perceived speed write speeds don't matter. They only matter if you want to extract archives or copy big files. Even for Installs only the random write matters and is generally higher then the CPU at unpacking install packs.
 
dusk007 said:
400MB/s read speed looks just fine and definitely nothing SATA 2 can do.
SATA is also serial and unidirectional so it shouldn't matter whether it is reading or writing.

Any chance you are using a small SSD and those write speeds are normal.
Small SSD write much slower yet read speeds usually are okay.

For perceived speed write speeds don't matter. They only matter if you want to extract archives or copy big files. Even for Installs only the random write matters and is generally higher then the CPU at unpacking install packs.
Click to expand...


Ok, I have a Samsung 840 120gb. Just wondering if anyone had the same issue.
 
Well the 400 MB/s aren't too far of and if the write hits about 100MB/s that seems about where it should be. This blackmagic tests usually comes in lower than tests like ATTO.

The Samsung 840 TLC has big chips with only half the controller's channel saturated at 120GB capacity. It is only rated at about 130MB/s.
The 240GB version has all 10 channels saturated and yields about double the write speed. And 480 up really get everything out of the controller.

That is just how it is with small SSDs. 120GB is small were 20nm TLC NAND is concerned. Used to be a problem with 64GB.
 
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