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boomhower

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 21, 2011
1,570
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I took delivery of my first Mac on Saturday, a refurbed 15" Pro. I also ordered a 256GB Crucial SSD, 8GB's of Crucial ram, and a generic optibay. I finally got time today after working 12's all weekend. The ram was a breeze, HD swap wasn't bad, and optibay wasn't bad either. Get everything buttoned up and did the internet restore to get Lion onto the SSD. It's quick and I'm loving it. Now the bad, the stock 500GB drive isn't showing up. I'll have to open it back up tomorrow and see if I missed a connector. When it didn't work I quickly realized I never checked to see if the DVD drive worked to start with, oops. I guess I have to put off moving over my movies and music for yet another day.
 
I took delivery of my first Mac on Saturday, a refurbed 15" Pro. I also ordered a 256GB Crucial SSD, 8GB's of Crucial ram, and a generic optibay. I finally got time today after working 12's all weekend. The ram was a breeze, HD swap wasn't bad, and optibay wasn't bad either. Get everything buttoned up and did the internet restore to get Lion onto the SSD. It's quick and I'm loving it. Now the bad, the stock 500GB drive isn't showing up. I'll have to open it back up tomorrow and see if I missed a connector. When it didn't work I quickly realized I never checked to see if the DVD drive worked to start with, oops. I guess I have to put off moving over my movies and music for yet another day.

What do you mean Internet restore? I also purchased a refurb 15" MBP and I am waiting on my optibay to get here but I wasn't sure if I had to purchase Lion again to get it on the SSD or if there was another way.

It could be a bad optibay you received though. Hopefully not!
 
What do you mean Internet restore? I also purchased a refurb 15" MBP and I am waiting on my optibay to get here but I wasn't sure if I had to purchase Lion again to get it on the SSD or if there was another way.

When you plug in an empty drive, it'll boot into OS X Utilities where you can choose to reformat your drive, connect to your Wi-Fi hotspot then redownload a fresh copy of Lion to install onto your computer.

No need to purchase Lion again- it'll just verify whether or not your computer already come preinstalled with Lion (which it did) and then download it. Had your computer not come preinstalled with Lion it would prompt you to login to your Apple ID to prove that you purchased Lion.
 
When you plug in an empty drive, it'll boot into OS X Utilities where you can choose to reformat your drive, connect to your Wi-Fi hotspot then redownload a fresh copy of Lion to install onto your computer.

No need to purchase Lion again- it'll just verify whether or not your computer already come preinstalled with Lion (which it did) and then download it. Had your computer not come preinstalled with Lion it would prompt you to login to your Apple ID to prove that you purchased Lion.

I couldn't every get that to work, it kept wanting to charge me. That's why I did the internet restore. I would have much rather made a USB drive out of it.
 
When you plug in an empty drive, it'll boot into OS X Utilities where you can choose to reformat your drive, connect to your Wi-Fi hotspot then redownload a fresh copy of Lion to install onto your computer.

No need to purchase Lion again- it'll just verify whether or not your computer already come preinstalled with Lion (which it did) and then download it. Had your computer not come preinstalled with Lion it would prompt you to login to your Apple ID to prove that you purchased Lion.

It came preinstalled on his original HD, not the SSD. So when utility boots up using the SSD as the main drive, it will require a purchase, because it won't recognize the original partitioned recovery drive.
 
It came preinstalled on his original HD, not the SSD. So when utility boots up using the SSD as the main drive, it will require a purchase, because it won't recognize the original partitioned recovery drive.

I assumed it just verified using the serial number or something like that. If that's the case (it needs to be on the original drive), that's a pretty dumb system Apple has implemented- what happens if there's an HD failure or something like that? It's not like they provide a physical way to restore the OS any more.
 
Well I just installed my new SSD and ran the Internet Recovery Utility. It downloaded and installed Lion on my new disk without making me purchase it again. So it is clearly not tied to the disk at all.
 
It came preinstalled on his original HD, not the SSD. So when utility boots up using the SSD as the main drive, it will require a purchase, because it won't recognize the original partitioned recovery drive.

It won't. The Lion install is tied to the machine and the firmware based Lion Recovery will know this and download Lion for free if Lion came with the machine. The drive based Lion Recovery partition does not need to be present.

Again, this only applies to new machines that came with Lion preinstalled.
 
It came preinstalled on his original HD, not the SSD. So when utility boots up using the SSD as the main drive, it will require a purchase, because it won't recognize the original partitioned recovery drive.

As long as you do the internet recovery it works fine. You just can't get it at the app store to make a physical drive. It sucks though, the internet recovery takes forever even on a 2MB/s connection.
 
Well I took it all apart again, checked the connections and put it back together. Still no dice. It looks as though the optibay may be the problem. It doesn't have an attachment point for the screw that's by itself on the right. I think that may not be keeping the SATA connection secure enough. I don't have a magnetic torx driver which makes reinstalling the DVD drive impossible. I'm ordering a tool kit that includes one from OWC today so this weekend I'll see if it works. I'm still mad at myself for not checking it before hand. I'm not paying $65 for a data doubler. I can get by with 256GB of storage, the extra would have just been nice. I'll stick it in an external enclosure at some point.

Question: If the DVD drive doesn't work have I screwed my warranty or will Apple repair it? Assuming that I've done no damage which I haven't.
 
Well I took it all apart again, checked the connections and put it back together. Still no dice. It looks as though the optibay may be the problem. It doesn't have an attachment point for the screw that's by itself on the right. I think that may not be keeping the SATA connection secure enough. I don't have a magnetic torx driver which makes reinstalling the DVD drive impossible. I'm ordering a tool kit that includes one from OWC today so this weekend I'll see if it works. I'm still mad at myself for not checking it before hand. I'm not paying $65 for a data doubler. I can get by with 256GB of storage, the extra would have just been nice. I'll stick it in an external enclosure at some point.

Question: If the DVD drive doesn't work have I screwed my warranty or will Apple repair it? Assuming that I've done no damage which I haven't.

If you haven't broken any seals or damaged anything, they shouldn't even notice that you've opened up the machine.
 
Well I took it all apart again, checked the connections and put it back together. Still no dice. It looks as though the optibay may be the problem. It doesn't have an attachment point for the screw that's by itself on the right. I think that may not be keeping the SATA connection secure enough. I don't have a magnetic torx driver which makes reinstalling the DVD drive impossible. I'm ordering a tool kit that includes one from OWC today so this weekend I'll see if it works. I'm still mad at myself for not checking it before hand. I'm not paying $65 for a data doubler. I can get by with 256GB of storage, the extra would have just been nice. I'll stick it in an external enclosure at some point.

Question: If the DVD drive doesn't work have I screwed my warranty or will Apple repair it? Assuming that I've done no damage which I haven't.

Your warranty is still good, as long as you haven't removed the battery seal, which you shouldn't have because it wasn't required for what your doing, you should be good. How did you remove the DVD drive in the first place without a torx driver?

If there is no attachment for the right, then yes, when you flip your macbook over that side might be hanging down and causing the connection to become loose. I would try to just install the DVD drive back in without screws, put something on top to press it down when you put the cover back on and then flip it over and make sure the DVD drive works. if it doesnt, you might have a bad sata cable.

Anyways, torx drivers can be bought at any local hardware store.
 
Your warranty is still good, as long as you haven't removed the battery seal, which you shouldn't have because it wasn't required for what your doing, you should be good. How did you remove the DVD drive in the first place without a torx driver?

If there is no attachment for the right, then yes, when you flip your macbook over that side might be hanging down and causing the connection to become loose. I would try to just install the DVD drive back in without screws, put something on top to press it down when you put the cover back on and then flip it over and make sure the DVD drive works. if it doesnt, you might have a bad sata cable.

Anyways, torx drivers can be bought at any local hardware store.

I've got the proper sized torx driver but it's not magnetic. When I took it apart I used it to loosen remove them and the magnetic screw driver to lift them out. But the space is to narrow to reinstall them without a magnetic tipped driver. It's hard to explain but with the optibay I was able to get them back in but the space is much tighter with the dvd drive and I can't get them in.

Good news on the warranty, hopefully I won't have to use it though. I just got the thing and love it. The thought of having to go back to my old Dell and send this guy in terrifies me!
 
Do you have a magnet of decent strength? Just stick it on the screwdriver, higher up the shaft, and it should magnetize it enough to keep the screw on it. Also, if it's a strong enough magnet, running it over it several times should magnetize it at least temporarily.

jW
 
Do you have a magnet of decent strength? Just stick it on the screwdriver, higher up the shaft, and it should magnetize it enough to keep the screw on it. Also, if it's a strong enough magnet, running it over it several times should magnetize it at least temporarily.

jW

I already tried that, none of my magnets are strong enough.
 
As long as you do the internet recovery it works fine. You just can't get it at the app store to make a physical drive. It sucks though, the internet recovery takes forever even on a 2MB/s connection.

You are correct you can't get it from the App store, but you can intercept the Lion download using this process and then use the saved DMG to make a USB key for yourself.
 
You are correct you can't get it from the App store, but you can intercept the Lion download using this process and then use the saved DMG to make a USB key for yourself.

Someone on another posted that link as well but after I'd already done the reinstall. Thanks though. I'm not to worked up over it. ML comes out soon and I'll be buying it so I can make the USB stick from it easily enough. I can't imagine I'll have to do another reinstall between now and then.
 
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