Swapping the optical bay what to replace it with?

[jjvdn]

I have a macbook pro 2011(early) i7 2.7GHz , 16GB ram, samsung 850 evo 500GB SSD. I want to swap out my optical bay for a secondary HD but have a few question. The first question is if I replace the optical bay for a secondary 500GB SSD, would it really increase the performance? Or it would be a waste of money?( I feel like after I upgraded to a SSD, it it already extremely fast) Or should i add a 1TB HD which would give it more storage space plus it would cost a lot cheaper. Also any good recommendation for a data doubler optical bay. I'm from Canada so I normally shop on amazon for these things but not sure what brand should I buy.

 

[Dadioh]

I have a macbook pro 2011(early) i7 2.7GHz , 16GB ram, samsung 850 evo 500GB SSD. I want to swap out my optical bay for a secondary HD but have a few question. The first question is if I replace the optical bay for a secondary 500GB SSD, would it really increase the performance? Or it would be a waste of money?( I feel like after I upgraded to a SSD, it it already extremely fast) Or should i add a 1TB HD which would give it more storage space plus it would cost a lot cheaper. Also any good recommendation for a data doubler optical bay. I'm from Canada so I normally shop on amazon for these things but not sure what brand should I buy.

Is it a 13" or 15" model? The 2011 13" are usually fine with SATA3 devices in the optical bay but the 2011 15" often have issues with SATA3 devices in the optical bay. I have 2 of the 15" models and neither is happy with a SATA3 device in there. However, my 2012 MBP13 is running just fine with a pair of Samsung 850 EVO 500GB at SATA3.

Just an FYI before you invest time and money into this...

 

[gngan]

I have an early 2011 13''. 1TB HDD in the optical bay. I don't see why you need SSD in there when you should just be installing your media files there. Go with 1TB HDD...cheaper.

 

[BoneDaddy]

Buy a duplicate of the one you already have and run them in raid0. It's easy to do and your Mac will be a bit faster in some areas. Otherwise it really doesn't matter because one will be a backup drive, sort of like a usb drive, except inside.

 

[simonsi]

A second SSD won't make the machine noticeably faster in real usage (for instance music only plays at one speed), the sensible option is a big HDD as stated, see my sig, it works great in practice...

 

[jjvdn]

A second SSD won't make the machine noticeably faster in real usage (for instance music only plays at one speed), the sensible option is a big HDD as stated, see my sig, it works great in practice...

alright thanks, was asking because some people put 2 SSD in their macbook pro. When I add the secondary HDD in the optical bay. Do I have to set up anything or does it automatically sync?

 

[simonsi]

alright thanks, was asking because some people put 2 SSD in their macbook pro. When I add the secondary HDD in the optical bay. Do I have to set up anything or does it automatically sync?

They are seperate drives, unless you set something up there will be no syncing. If you want a syncing/backup then you have several options, some are:

1. Use one as a Time Machine Drive for the other
2. Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone one drive to the other
3. Use CCC to copy only certain folders to the other
...etc etc