OptiBay Local Supplier

Look on eBay for 2nd HDD SDD hard drive caddy Apple MacBook Pro Unibody. Sold by nimitz**. I've seen them recommended a lot on Mac forums.
 
For which version MaBook are you buying? I just got one of Amazon for my late 2011 - didn't work. Can't boot off the drive in it, and once booted off the regular drive, the OS sees the drive in the optibay but can't write to it.
 
Thanks for the replies guys.

@koffiejunkie I have an early 2011 MBP. Did you buy the OptiBay second hand or was MCE Technologies the seller on Amazon?
 
Neither, I got this one. I should probably have been more careful. This one didn't even fit properly in the bay - The metal is folded at the end, making it slightly deeper than the optical drive. I had to peel off the top plate and break out some of the plastic to get it fit in. It also doesn't have all the screws to tie it down properly.

All of that doesn't matter so much to me, but it didn't work properly. As far as I can see, the circuit board just passes the connection straight through - there is no electronics involved - so I can only assume that there is another reason why it didn't work. Maybe the connector for the optical drive doesn't supply enough power?
 
That was exactly the one I was going to go for, but the fact that it did not have mounting screws changed my mind a bit. I think I am rather going to bite the bullet and get the proper thing.
 
bwana said:
Will do. I think it's the only way I'm going to be able to resurrect my old MBP without replacing the logic board.
Click to expand...

If your old MBP is the one I'm thinking of (i.e. older than mine) you're out of luck. They didn't have SATA for the optical bay.
 
koffiejunkie said:
If your old MBP is the one I'm thinking of (i.e. older than mine) you're out of luck. They didn't have SATA for the optical bay.
Click to expand...

This one does - only with a different connector than the HDD (otherwise I'd have just swapped the cable).
 
koffiejunkie said:
Aah, so you have a newer one then.
Click to expand...
Mine is a A1278 with a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo. Got it back in 2010 iirc. I've checked on iFixIt and it's definitely a SATA superdrive.

I hope this fixes it. It would be nice to be able to give it to the missus instead of her old (metal) unibody MacBook.
 
bwana said:
Mine is a A1278 with a 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo. Got it back in 2010 iirc.
Click to expand...

Aah sorry, I thought you still had the Core Duo pre-unibody. Maybe I'm confusing you with someone else :) As far as I know my early 2008 MBP is the last one with IDE optical drive.
 
koffiejunkie said:
Aah sorry, I thought you still had the Core Duo pre-unibody. Maybe I'm confusing you with someone else :) As far as I know my early 2008 MBP is the last one with IDE optical drive.
Click to expand...
I probably have one of those lying around somewhere too! :)

The broken one is in otherwise perfect condition and a great machine. Much better than the one my missus is currently using (it has a dodgy trackpad) but maybe not worth the cost of replacing the logic board.
 
bwana said:
The broken one is in otherwise perfect condition and a great machine.
Click to expand...

I'm hanging on to my old MBP for that exact reason. It's a much better machine than price they're going for on eBay suggests. Selling the Asus POS instead.
 
Turns out the problem I was having has something to do with the second SATA controller on the late2011 MBP (early 2011 models too):

Just like the Early 2011 models, while we continue to see reliability with 6Gb/s in the optical bay of the 13″ model - the optical bays of the 15″ and 17″ models remain too unstable for 6Gb/s drive use.
Click to expand...


If you're going for one of these, I suggest looking at this article and doing some research on your model if it's not mentioned here.

I swapped my drives around, so the spinny disc is now in the (fake) optibay. Works like a charm, but the (fake) optibay has an awful rattle to it - probably because I had to butcher it quite a bit to make it fit at all. So I promptly ordered the real item.

One thing I'll note, if you're planning to do a setup like I did - OS on the SSD, /Users on the spinny disc - be aware that the performance benefit is rather muted in everyday use. Yes, it boots in seconds, but once you start applications and they have to read their settings in your ~/Library it slows things down considerably. Aperture, for example, starts instantly, but then takes several seconds to open my Aperture library, as it did before.

So I'm planning to get a SATA2 SSD to put in the optibay for OS, and a big SATA3 for /Users - that should make everything as fast as it can go :)
 
I decided to take my current disk out, stick the ssd in it's bay and put the optibay and my current hdd in the spot where the cd drive is. I have opted to do a fresh install and will keep my OS and all apps and app data on the SSD.

All other data like images, music, archived documents will be stored on the hdd. I am prepared for a bit of performance knock when playing music from that drive. But I want my day to day operations to fly
 
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