Want to put an sata laptop drive into the connection that was used for my superdrive

I have a macbook pro, model A1226 from late 2007. My superdrive is broken, and i took it out, and now want to try to find some sort of cable to allow me to plug in an sata laptop drive into the connection that was previously used for my superdrive. I think the superdrive used IDE, but i can't find a similar cable anywhere, which will allow me to use this old superdrive hookup to put in a second hard drive, which is sata. I have uploaded a couple of pictures of my old superdrive, and the cable which connects it to my motherboard in hopes that someone can identify the cable used, and where i might find a cable to hook up a latop sata drive i have kickin around. I know it wont be a perfect fit, but getting it connected is my main concern right now.

I attached a pic of my SATA hard drive that i want to hook up so you can see the cable configurations I am working with.

I have attached a pic of the cable which connected my superdrive to my motherboard. I need a cable or adapter to make this cable plug into my sata hard drive within my laptop.


I hope this makes sense and i hope someone can help.

Essentially, my superdrive broke, I have this one cable (shown above ) to be able to connect a new HD into the motherboard, but lack the parts or knowledge of where to find them.


Thanks so much



Dorf

Your attached photos are a bit blurred so it's difficult to make out the connector and its pins. However..... The Superdrive is an IDE drive which tells us that the connector has to be an IDE type. It "appears" to be a mini IDE connector which is used for laptop drives for both Mac and PC.

I know you would like to use that SATA drive but if you really want a second hard drive in the machine you could always use a notebook IDE drive instead. That way you would not need an IDE to SATA adapter connector. Of course you could also use your express bus slot to do the same thing.

You might want to go to iFixit: Apple Mac, MacBook, iPod, and iPhone Repair Parts and take a look at their photos and step by step instructions for replacing the Superdrive on your model MBP. That might help you to get a better idea of what's involved.

Regards.

I just can't find any hard drive that has the same connector as this cable that was inside my machine. Even the IDE drives for laptops dont have anything even close. Is this some weird apple specific cable that they use only for superdrives?

I just checked the ifixit step by step for replacing the optical drive in your machine. It really doesn't show what the connector looks like close up. But from what I can see, it looks like it might be a combined ATA IDE connector for notebooks. When I say combined, it has the IDE pins and also the power supply pins rather than the typical double connector.

Regards.

dorfdorf said:

I have a macbook pro, model A1226 from late 2007. My superdrive is broken, and i took it out, and now want to try to find some sort of cable to allow me to plug in an sata laptop drive into the connection that was previously used for my superdrive.

Click to expand...

A quick google search brings up this link, plus there are others which might help.

Take a look here..
MCE Optibay
I was thinking of doing this but I travel a lot and don't want extra cords or peripherals to carry.

Man, I changed mine tonight! Ive got a MacBook Black. My SuperDrive was bust, so i bought a 320GB Seagate Momentus 7200rpm HDD and a drive caddy from NewModeUS

Easy job to do if you like getting your hands dirty.

Optical Bay Hard Drive Caddy (OBHD9-SATA-B), Black, 9.5mm [OBHD9-SATA-B] - $42.00 : NewmodeUS, Hard Drive Caddys for Notebooks

Thats what I bought for mine.

I reckon that should be the same as its a PATA to SATA version