MCE Optibay with crucial M4 ssd not working in MacBook Pro

orderflow · Oct 13, 2012

Hi all,

Reading the forums I think i'm not the first with problems with the crucial m4 ssd in a macbook pro, but I haven't seen a clean solution so I hope I can get some good advice here.

Yesterday I received an MCE Optibay 256 GB ssd I ordered for my MacBook Pro 15" - late 2011 running OSX Lion. The SSD that was included is a Crucial M4. After Installing the drive everything looks fine, but the disk performance is terrible: when I copy a simple 850 MB file from my HD to the ssd it takes about 9 minutes. Also reading from the disk is extremely slow (for example I cannot even play a movie stored on the SSD). After some googling I found a lot of discussions about problems with crucial sad in new macbook pro models. I hope some of you have suggestions how to solve this. I have attached some screenshots that show the system configuration. Are there any software or hardware settings I have to change to make this work?

Thanks for your suggestions

Stretch · Oct 13, 2012

2 questions:
1. Is the SSD in the optical slot?
2. Is the SSD a SATA III/6Gbs device?

orderflow · Oct 13, 2012

Yes to both, it is in the optical slot and it is a SATAIII/6Gbs.

cwa107 · Oct 13, 2012

I have a Crucial M4 256GB in my early 2011 MacBook Pro (2GHz, 8GB RAM), but it's in the primary hard disk bay, with no secondary drive. It's been flawless since December 2011, under daily use.

I wonder if you'd have any better luck installing it in place of the HDD and moving the HDD over to the optibay. Secondly, be sure you're running the latest firmware (000f).

orderflow · Oct 13, 2012

Thanks, the more I read on the web, the more I find that SATAIII/6Gb and the optical bay of the macbook pro don't work together. I think your suggestion to move them around would work, but I hesitate because I would loose the shock protection on my hdd. Don't know how big a problem that is though. All advice welcome.

orderflow · Oct 13, 2012

Currently running the ssd with a fresh Mountain Lion installation in the main bay. I must say it feels so good that I am tempted to leave it there. Hope my hdd (now demoted to data drive) survives the optical bay without shock protection.

Stretch · Oct 14, 2012

Yeah, I just found this out the other day. I thought I had a SATA III SSD, but it was only a SATA II. It died and I needed a replacement so I ordered a new one because a warranty replacement was going to take too long. Got my new drive in and nothing but issues. Swapped the new 6Gbs SSD into the main drive bay and the HDD to the optibay and working great since. Apple really screwed up the SATA III in the early 2011 15 and 17 MBPs.

cwa107 · Oct 14, 2012

orderflow said:
Currently running the ssd with a fresh Mountain Lion installation in the main bay. I must say it feels so good that I am tempted to leave it there. Hope my hdd (now demoted to data drive) survives the optical bay without shock protection.

Well, I'd say that if that Toshiba HDD made it this long without going belly up, you're already a pretty lucky person. The little rubber isolators on mounting points of the drive aren't going to do much for shock protection in the event of a major trauma (like dropping the notebook) and in casual use, the drive's already built-in shock protection should be fine.

Regardless, you're already on borrowed time with a Toshiba HDD - I wouldn't put any data I cared about on one (without running very regular backups).