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Which drive goes where? General rules?

Maseison

Maseison

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 30, 2011
12
2
El Paso, TX
Is there a black and white rule/answer on which type of hard drive should go in which area (the original HD spot or the optical bay). I've seen people swear by the Optical bay for their SSD's and some people say the HDD should go there! I'm getting a late 2011 13" Macbook pro w/750GB i7 and this is honestly racking my brain! :( I planned on getting a Sandisk Ultra SSD 120GB (the difference in SATA II and III aren't a big deal to me) and putting it in the optical bay but now i'm not even sure about that. To top things off, i have no idea what TRIM is, will the SMS work with the 750GB drive in the optical bay, and any other cons to making this move will be. Sorry to ramble on and on but any help will be welcomed! :eek:
 
Maseison said:
Is there a black and white rule/answer on which type of hard drive should go in which area (the original HD spot or the optical bay). I've seen people swear by the Optical bay for their SSD's and some people say the HDD should go there! I'm getting a late 2011 13" Macbook pro w/750GB i7 and this is honestly racking my brain! :( I planned on getting a Sandisk Ultra SSD 120GB (the difference in SATA II and III aren't a big deal to me) and putting it in the optical bay but now i'm not even sure about that. To top things off, i have no idea what TRIM is, will the SMS work with the 750GB drive in the optical bay, and any other cons to making this move will be. Sorry to ramble on and on but any help will be welcomed! :eek:
Click to expand...

others might know more, but i think the only prefference is where the main bay has the 6.0GBit/s and the Optibay might only be 3.0GBit/s where new machines are 6.0 in both
 
There is a very simple rule.
Put the SSD into the optibay unless that doesn't work.
Doesn't work means either some bug or only SATA 2 speeds with an SATA 3 SSD.

SSD in the optibay and HDD in the main bay is always the better solution. Less noise, better mounting of the hdd. Only with early 2011 MBP that have been bought in the first months after release there is no SATA 6G on the optical bay port and some say later 2011 still have some problems in that respect.

2010 and older models always go SSD optibay.
2011 I don't have one I cannot test it (mine is 2010) but I have heard it work both ways (wheter some people are jsut incapable or they don't distinguish between old and mid/late 2011, I don't know) and I would try it out. You can switch those drives around. I installed mine in the HDD bay to install windows bootcamp (with the DVD in the optical drive) but now it is in the optibay. That isn't dead set to whatever setting you have at the beginning. The system really doesn't care on which SATA port a system drive is located.
On my desktop I have six ports and when tinkering around or formating new hdds, I ripped out the cable mulitple times and plugged it into different locations back in. I always boots up.
 
dusk007 said:
There is a very simple rule.
Put the SSD into the optibay unless that doesn't work.
Doesn't work means either some bug or only SATA 2 speeds with an SATA 3 SSD.

SSD in the optibay and HDD in the main bay is always the better solution. Less noise, better mounting of the hdd. Only with early 2011 MBP that have been bought in the first months after release there is no SATA 6G on the optical bay port and some say later 2011 still have some problems in that respect.

2010 and older models always go SSD optibay.
2011 I don't have one I cannot test it (mine is 2010) but I have heard it work both ways (wheter some people are jsut incapable or they don't distinguish between old and mid/late 2011, I don't know) and I would try it out. You can switch those drives around. I installed mine in the HDD bay to install windows bootcamp (with the DVD in the optical drive) but now it is in the optibay. That isn't dead set to whatever setting you have at the beginning. The system really doesn't care on which SATA port a system drive is located.
On my desktop I have six ports and when tinkering around or formating new hdds, I ripped out the cable mulitple times and plugged it into different locations back in. I always boots up.
Click to expand...

how do you tell the speed in the optibay

i purchases my MBP in October from apple refurb, in my system report im pretty sure my optical drive and my hard drive are showing different speeds

1 says 3.0Gbit mad one says 6.0Gbit
 
Thanks guys! i just didn't wanna do something crazy.

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iisforiphone said:
how do you tell the speed in the optibay

i purchases my MBP in October from apple refurb, in my system report im pretty sure my optical drive and my hard drive are showing different speeds

1 says 3.0Gbit mad one says 6.0Gbit
Click to expand...

the one that is 3.0 is sata II if i'm correct
 
iisforiphone said:
thanks so i assume the sata 2 is the optical bay?
Click to expand...
Most likely here is the the divide tree

**edit**

The second one is the optical..Matshitadvd
 

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