Mid 2012 13" MB - SSD in Opti Bay, Yes or No??

Hi all,

I'm a new here and gradually progressing from PC to the world of Apple..and I love it ;D

I run my own photography business and can process/export hundreds of RAW images so having a machine that isn't going to lag around but is very reliable is what I need.

At the moment I have a mid 2012 MacBook Pro 13" i5 4gb 500gb HDD, basic model I know (geekbenching at around 6800 standard) but I plan a few upgrades and this is where the questions come in and would be most grateful for some techy answers -

I have purchased a Crucial M4 256gb SSD, will this operate at the same read/write speed in the opti drive bay as if I mounted it in the HDD bay?? I ask this question as it seems bit of a gray area whether its 3mb/s or 6mb/s speed dependent on year or 13" or 15" model??

Also I will upgrade the RAM from 4gb to 16gb, is this worth it or should I just go with Apple's suggestion of 8gb?? money is not the issue here as 8 to 16 gb is a few ££ more.
For stability I will buy the Crucial RAM as its 1.35v compared to most other upgrades which are 1.5v

What is the best connector for a hooking up the MBP to a external monitor with dual DVI connections??

Really sorry about all the questions but I'm keen to get my Mac flying but also super reliable so any advice or answers will be very welcome.

the optical bay is 3mb/s and the hdd bay is up to 6mb/s, so ideally you would move your hdd to the optical bay and install your ssd into where the old hdd was.

Have a look at the OWC Data Doubler, its a good option for mounting your old HDD in the optical bay

Rgds,
Dave

Mounting a spinning hard drive in the optical bay is not recommended since it will have no protection there against any sudden motion. The sudden motion detector only works in the normal bay. An SSD does not require sudden motion detection or protection. Besides, the SSD will operate just as fast in the optical bay.

Mid 2012 13" MB - SSD in Opti Bay, Yes or No??

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I have this exact setup - with an OWC 480GB SSD in the hard drive bay, and the stock hard drive is in an OWC Data Doubler, in the optical bay. I also have 16GB of RAM. Highly Recommend.

As far as the RAM goes I am running 16gb in the model previous to yours and it is definetly worth it. When multitasking between editing applications you get zero lag and still have RAM to spare, and it would make handling RAW images much easier. I would highly recommend the 16gb upgrade for you.