MBP 15": Moving HDD to SuperDrive slot: How easy it is to do?

Hey guys!

I've been off the forums for quite a while now, but it's great to be back and part of the discussion again. I missed this place!

So I've got a discussion topic:

How easy is it to swap your internal HDD and put it in the SuperDrive slot? Has anyone done this? Can this be done in-house without having to send my computer away?

I'm talking uMBP 15" - the one where you can actually open the battery pack out and flush the HDD (and ram) out.

I'm thinking of buying a SSD for my main (boot) drive and having the 320GB one swapped with the SuperDrive.

Cheers!

 

depends how much experience you have opening up and changing things out on laptops....

I swapped mine out using a OptiBay... wasn't too hard, just lots of screws and couple tiny little cables/plugs to deal with that are in the way. Overall I found it quite easy, but I've repaired and rebuilt thousands of laptops over the years, so it might be easier to me than others.

Mine is a 15"er similar to what you described. I swapped one out in a 17" and it was more of a pain... much more so, but the 15" didn't have the same spacing and extra metal pieces problem.

They give directions how to do it, but I'd only attempt it if your normally comfortable working inside of a laptop.... and make sure you have a T6 driver.

 

I did it on my MBP 13", the 15s shouldn't be too different.
I run a SSD and a 500gb HDD.
I just take out 10 screws, pull my bottom off, detach the HDD and CD Drive's ribbon cables, Undo 3 screws holding the CD Drive down, then undo two screws holding the little bass speaker (this part helps hold down the drive.)

After that pull it out. You need to transfer a little bracket from the CD to the optibay holder thing, this is a support. Then the small cable apparatus.

Put the HDD into the Optibay holder thing, and plop it back in.
Because of the optibay thing design i bought, it is a general made for that specific chipset kind, i can't use the screws towards the opening of the CD slot, there simply arent any holes. But the support bracket thing from the old CD drive using only 1 screw, holds everything perfectly fine.

You should definately do it, I can't even think of using a non-SSD laptop.

 

Did you guys all buy that MCE Optibay thing, or is there a cheaper way to do this that I'm missing?

I'd love to do this, but an extra $100 for the MCE adapter on top of the $450+ it would cost me for a 160GB X25-M is just too much hurt to swallow.

 

Very good video tutorial has been done by Don McAllister over at ScreenCastOnline.

Install 2nd HDD in place of the optical drive

It's a Member show though which means you need to have a subscription with ScreenCastOnline in order to watch it.

 

I used the MCE Optibay. It is a bit overpriced, but it comes with a external case you can put your super drive in that makes it an external USB powered drive... its a really cheap crappy looking case, but they call it "free" even though its all priced so high you really paid for it.

 

Lot of people are using a caddy from NewModeus. It costs $42: Link

Another alternative for $29.95: Link. It's an IBM part, and you need to remove the plastic bezel which is very easy (this seems to be true for any caddy that you get for the MBP).

Lastly, here is a big thread on this mod. Just ignore the first ghetto mod and focus on the rest using different caddies. You'll see lot of pictures with different models, etc. Link

Good luck!