Second hard drive in a Macbook pro

posted Aug 23rd 2009 8:27am by
filed under: macs hacks, peripherals hacks

Picture 4 (Custom)

[Reid] wrote in to show us how to add a second hard drive to his Macbook Pro. He found that he hardly ever used his DVD drive, so sacrificed it in favor of added storage. What he found was that it had a proprietary adapter that he was unable to find for sale anywhere. Making an adapter may seem like a pretty simple hack, but this could save some people considerable time. Its also worth noting that upgrading the firmware got him an 18% speed increase, so don’t ignore those updates. We don’t see too many mac hacks around here, you may recall the mac tablet hacks and the logo monitor.

tagged: , , ,


20 Responses to Second hard drive in a Macbook pro

  • strider_mt2k says:
    August 23, 2009 at 8:57 am

    Nice mod!

    If you don’t need the optical drive, why lug it around? There are USB externals aplenty nowadays.

    Reply Report comment
  • Zig says:
    August 23, 2009 at 9:18 am

    Take a look at a “SATA HDD Caddy Adapter For Thinkpad T400″ on eBay. It has the same small SATA connector in what looks like the same position. Ya, putting x-IBM stuff in an Mac may cause it to spontaneously collapse into a black hole, but for $14 it is worth trying. #8^}

    Reply Report comment
  • Matt says:
    August 23, 2009 at 9:37 am

    for people with an older non-SATA MBP, there is a more affordable solution than the MCE Optibay.

    http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_27&products_id=219

    I haven’t tried it yet, but it should do the trick.

    Reply Report comment
  • Sashmo says:
    August 23, 2009 at 12:45 pm

    Nice one Matt, thats exactly what I’ve been looking for. I think I’m going to order one right now…

    What do you guys think? a 320gig 7200 for $90 for main drive, and a 500gig 5400 for 90 for a second drive?

    Or should I just wait and get two 500gig 7200 when they drop in price?

    Reply Report comment
  • archer174 says:
    August 23, 2009 at 1:44 pm

    Nice info Matt. If you look they have part numbers for a 9.5mm SATA version as well.

    Reply Report comment
  • gm says:
    August 23, 2009 at 4:42 pm

    Why has the blog been flagged as “only suitable for adults”?

    Reply Report comment
  • strider_mt2k says:
    August 23, 2009 at 4:51 pm

    @zig:

    or it could be the hybrid that finnaly brings up all together!

    …naaaaa

    Reply Report comment
  • strider_mt2k says:
    August 23, 2009 at 4:52 pm

    Let me try this again

    or it could be the hybrid that finally brings us all together!

    Meh.

    Reply Report comment
  • Dave says:
    August 23, 2009 at 11:53 pm

    Silly Hacker,

    Macs are for Kids!

    Reply Report comment
  • draeath says:
    August 24, 2009 at 1:32 am

    gm:

    Because websense and friends are run by fools?

    Reply Report comment
  • Yrb says:
    August 24, 2009 at 8:48 am

    A Unix system with an x86 processor, I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid that you’re an idiot.

    Reply Report comment
  • Dave says:
    August 24, 2009 at 7:52 pm

    @yrb

    Awww… Come on, I’ve been called worse by mac users. ‘freetard’ comes to mind. Of course darwin is based on ‘freetard’ programming. Too bad for me I can’t get a unix operating system on my toshiba… I guess I’m just jealous.

    Reply Report comment
  • Matt says:
    August 25, 2009 at 2:15 pm

    That connector looks like a limline SATA connector common on slimline SATA optical drives. AFAIK, it is not proprietary (part of the current spec) and adaptor cables can be found online and even in some computer stores (just saw some at my local Microcenter last week).

    Reply Report comment
  • Ike says:
    November 15, 2009 at 6:12 pm

    in macbook add 2nd harddrive he says and don’t forget to upgrade your firmware EMI to v1.7
    what is he talking about?
    firmware for the harddrives?

    thanks

    Reply Report comment
  • tim says:
    November 18, 2009 at 6:53 am

    Will this work in a july 2009 Macbook pro?

    Reply Report comment
  • Kelly says:
    September 26, 2010 at 4:32 pm

    Check this out. Comes with a FREE enclosure for your superdrive.

    http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/

    Reply Report comment
  • Sh4 says:
    April 4, 2011 at 5:59 pm

    you can get mce optibay’s for under 20$ shipping included by typing “optibay” on ebay, got mine this way and it’s working fine with an ocz vertex 2, got sata3 so I get speeds of around 150mb/s

    Reply Report comment
  • Nathan says:
    May 21, 2011 at 4:34 pm

    I just checked with apple, if you do not break anything putting in the 2nd hard drive, you will not void the warranty

    Reply Report comment
  • Loz says:
    July 23, 2011 at 2:51 am

    I installed a PATA ebay version but the disk is not appearing on my system. I got a replacement opti-bay but same thing happens. If I swap back the CD drive that works fine.
    Am I missing something?

    Reply Report comment
  • arno says:
    February 10, 2012 at 11:44 am

    Hi,
    I just installed 2 OCZ vertex 3 SSD’s into my 2011 Macbook pro, but at first it would only recognize one of the hard drives, so I switched them, now it doesn’t recognize any. I am booting up from an external drive, but when I go into Disc Utilities I don’t see any other drives now. I have checked all the connections and as far as I can tell everything is hooked up right.
    Any suggestions?

    Reply Report comment

    • Leave a Reply

    XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title="" rel=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <pre> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

    Hack a Day serves up fresh hacks each day, every day from around the web as well as hacking related news.

    Send us your hacks






         



    Hacks

    Resources