I’m thinking of upgrading my laptop so it runs more fluently and was thinking of installing a 120GB SSD in my optical bay drive via a so called ‘optical drive bay adapter’, but I’m having some questions about these products:
First off,
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[]Does anyone have experience with these kind of adapters?
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If so,
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[]Which brand?
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—> If there are real ‘brands’ that make them at all.
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[]Where did you buy it/ ± price ?
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—> Only shops that seem to pop up on the web are Amazon and some shady looking websites. Prices vary greatly too, from 10 to 100 dollar.
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[]Was it worth the price?
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—> Most of them look like cheaply made products and I can’t seem to find decent reviews or detailed tech specs on them. Some users complained of slow SATA interfaces, inferior materials or bad assembly.
If anyone has experience/knowledge with these, please tell. Any help is appreciated!
Won’t it work with these adapters? Didn’t see much of a problem since the DVD drive and SSD both have SATA connections. Thought the adapter is just a passthrough device that connects the fixed, internal SATA port with the SSD while serving as a hd slot/case at the same time.
Can you explain why it wouldn’t work, as I’m quite noob on the subject…
Done this in two computers; go the cheap route. It’s a small adapter to convert the optical-drive SATA connector to a more standard 2.5" laptop hard-drive SATA connector, and a mounting bracket of some sort. On both the machines I did this on, the $20 adapters I bought (that were advertised to be built for my machine, the appropriate MacBook Pro models) worked flawlessly on the electrical side of things (I even did performance characterization before and after the fact to make sure the adapter wasn’t somehow noisy or limiting performance; it wasn’t), and (while a little janky, since these things are made of plastic) effective on the mounting side of things. One of them actually squeaked a little when I secured it, so I added some foam to prevent the motion that was causing the noise, and it’s been working perfectly ever since.
It isn’t the sata connector I was worried about, but how you going to secure the SSD down.
Not all laptops are made the same and not all have standard mounts. Example what Dell was infamous for in the past.
This is a good point – make sure that whatever adapter you’re getting is properly secured within the case, such that nothing will be damaged. This is especially important if you’re using a non-standard (caddy) mounting scheme on a rotating-platter hard drive, as they need to be mounted securely and in such a fashion that takes their inherent vibrations into consideration.
Yeah, but that’s what I’m saying: so long as you buy an adapter like the op said, you’re golden. Of course there are thing to be aware of: slot loading vs tray, swappable bay (like Dell used to make) vs fixed…
If it’s slot loading though, you’re pretty much all set with an adapter kit.
A friend of mine warned me that with Macbook Pros, the machine will eject & turn off the drive in the optical bay once battery power drops to 10% . Which wouldn’t be a problem if you were using the DVD drive, but with a mechanical disk… ouch.
Never heard or seen that one, and I spent more than a few years working as an Apple tech. I can assure you that if that function does exist, it’s related only to optical drives.
Thanks for the reply guys, just the info needed. Gonna switch HDD to my optical bay and put the SSD where the regular was, only thing I’m worried for is that the bezel won’t fit. But if it doesn’t we’ll just make it fit!
SRK Tech talk for the win!!
I (frustratingly regularly) go below 10% battery on my main laptop (MacBook Pro, early '10 model), and I can verify that this does NOT happen; both drives are accessible well into the reserve battery power, all the way to a fully dead battery. I’ve also done this many times with an '08 model, and know someone who’s got a late-2011 with an optical bay adapter; I think he actually uses that drive as his boot volume, and I’ve never heard him say he had any such problems.
