04-09-2011, 10:16 AM

I was just wondering if any MBP owners have replaced their optical drive with another HDD (SSD or SATA)
I know that the new macbook disk drives are SATA now and I was considering doing this.
I dont use the optical drive anyway, and have been considering upgrading to SSD since I bought the machine. Now Im thinking that I could leave the stock 500GB drive where it is and load the OS on to an SSD inside the macbook for faster boot up and so on, rendering the old drive for storage use, etc.
is this a good idea? any other thoughts?

04-09-2011, 10:46 PM

Lots of folks have done just that. Do some more searching and in the meantime you might want to look at what OWC has. LINK If you buy the kit, it includes a carrier for the optical drive which is removed.

Note that you're talking about spending quite a few $$. The data doubler bay costs around $75, plus what you will spend on the SSD.

04-10-2011, 03:30 AM

Yes, I did see OWC's conversion kit, but I was wondering if I needed it. Arent the 2011 MBP's equipped with SATA already? I have only seen this kit being installed in slightly older models and I didn't know if the adapter was necessary.
But I see in mactracker that you have to go back to 2006 macbooks for the UATA optical bus.
Maybe I just don't know enough about the mod (this is highly likely) and a little nervous about possibly ordering parts that I dont need.
thanks for your advice

04-10-2011, 03:39 AM

wait. I only just noticed the compatibility report below on that same page. duh.
seems like the way to go for me.
Now the question is do I wait for the 1 year warranty to run out? Or just void it in exchange for better performance now....

04-10-2011, 11:15 AM

Well, that's up to you of course. What you can do is remove the data doubler kit/SSD and put back the optical drive should you ever have to use your warranty. Kind of a pain but getting repairs done under warranty by Apple will save you money if you should ever need it.

04-10-2011, 11:37 AM

I recall reading an article from a guy who analyzed the 2 drive ports. He found that the port connecting the hard drive is the new type of SATA, and the port connecting the optical drive is the old type (1/2 as fast as the new type). So, if you buy a fast hard drive that has the new higher speed SATA - you would want to connect it where the hard drive is now. At least that is what I expect to do at some point.

04-10-2011, 12:50 PM

I've also been considering making this modification to my macbook pro. One question though, I have a MBA with the usb superdrive for MBA, will it work in my MBP via USB?

04-11-2011, 04:38 AM

I don't see why not. But you dont have to remove the superdrive in your MBP to test it. You could try it now before you do the mod