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I posted this in NBR but I wanted to share the love here as well. It benefited me a lot since I don't have a need for an optical drive and my SSD is only 80 GB.

This is the optical bay I bought... SATA Hard Drive Caddy Bay Macbook PRO 13" Unibody A1278 - eBay (item 260760330830 end time May-28-11 02:09:19 PDT)

You do not have to buy the same optical HDD caddy but it does have to be 9.5mm in height. Anything bigger will not fit.

Do this at your own risk. I take no responsibility for any mishaps you encounter along the way.

Before you do this, install your SSD as you would normally, and install windows from the DVD with the optical disc drive still in the M14x. IF NOT THEN YOUR COMPUTER WILL BOOT FROM THE HARD DRIVE YOU HAVE WINDOWS OS ON REGARDLESS WHICH SATA SLOT IT IS IN.

Step 1. Optical Bay I Purchase from eBay

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Step 2. Opening the bottom panel

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Step 3. This is the DVD optical disc bay that comes in the M14x

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Step 4. Removal of screws. (GO TO STEP 5 BEFORE REMOVING STRIP)

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Step 5. Careful removal of the SATA strip

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Step 6. Optical disc bay vs Optical HDD bay

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Step 7. How to remove the SATA strip from optical disc bay

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Step 8. The SATA strip

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Step 9. Removing the caddy from the optical disc drive

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Step 10. Attaching the strip on the optical HDD bay exaclty as it was on the optical disc bay.

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Step 11. The optical HDD bay with strip attached.

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Step 12. The gap filler provided with the optical bay. It's to fill the space between the HDD and the optical HDD bay.

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Step 13. What the gap filler looks like with the HDD in the optical HDD bay

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Step 14. Removal of black panel form optical HDD bay. * must be removed for it to fit inside the M14x *

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Step 15. Optical HDD bay with black panel removed.

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Step 16. Placement of optical HDD bay inside M14x

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Step 17. Drivers automatically installed.

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Step 18. Computer detecting secondary hard drive

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Step 19. HWinfo with the both the SSD the HDD in the info (Sata II 3Gb/s)

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I will fix it up and add any additional pictures if needed as time goes on. If you don't like the guide, please don't criticize. This is for the visual people out there who need help and want to enjoy the additional hard drive.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask :)

Edited by TitanGod
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Yea I have been using it for about a week now and have not run into any problems. Just transfered about 200 GB worth of shows and movies I have and everything went through smoothly.

@arklight

After looking online, buying an external enclosure for the 9.5mm drive would cost just as much as buying an external DVD drive.

I have not been able to find any cheap enclosures unfortunately

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Well .. so much for trying to get this done tonight myself. Thanks to CRAPPY USPS SERVICE that says the item was delivered when it certainly wasn't delivered to my house.. .q234!@#$!@#$!@#$@#$%@#$%#$^

Edited by Stevenxowens792
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Well .. so much for trying to get this done tonight myself. Thanks to CRAPPY USPS SERVICE that says the item was delivered when it certainly wasn't delivered to my house.. .q234!@#$!@#$!@#$@#$%@#$%#$^

You have got to be kidding me.... They actually delivered it to the wrong house?!?!

-_______________-

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Yea I have been using it for about a week now and have not run into any problems. Just transfered about 200 GB worth of shows and movies I have and everything went through smoothly.

@arklight

After looking online, buying an external enclosure for the 9.5mm drive would cost just as much as buying an external DVD drive.

I have not been able to find any cheap enclosures unfortunately

I was just going to buy the cable, if that's available. But thanks for letting me know. hehe.

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Ok, after running some benchmarks on the secondary hard drive with the optical

Caddy, it seems as it may not be running at it's advertised SATA II speeds. I have the WD black 500 GB 7200 rpm in the caddy and with ATTO it peaked at around 93Mb read/write. I don't know what avg speeds are for a mechanical drive but it doesn't seem normal to me.

I'm gonna try the optical caddy with my SSD and see if gets atleast 200 Mb read/write. If not then the caddy is faulty or is only SATA I capable :(

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Good idea because some mechanical drives barely get about 130mbs max read/write and avg 50-100. So if the SSD isn't atleast at a decent speed with a bench like crytaldisk to help compare then... they made that port a low speed port and that's bull... Optical drives need high I/O too!

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Ive been thinking of doing the mod, but i am scared of breaking that little white connector that holds the ribbon cable from the optical D: Ive been in there once and added an SSD but for some reason ive developed a phobia lol. has anyone else used that Macbook caddy? if so what are the opinions?

thx in advance

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Ive been thinking of doing the mod, but i am scared of breaking that little white connector that holds the ribbon cable from the optical D: Ive been in there once and added an SSD but for some reason ive developed a phobia lol. has anyone else used that Macbook caddy? if so what are the opinions?

thx in advance

It says Macbook cause majority of 9.5mm caddys are used by macbooks. They just are trying to market the macbook people so they can get it.

The only thing you need to know is that it's slot-load and it;s 9.5mm :)

It runs good, only concern is that it runs at SATA I speed, which isn't a big deal for me since i'm using a standard 500GB HDD in it . the SSD is in the main SATA slot.

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Since it is limited to SATA I, putting an SSD in there would be a waste....

SATA I is decent for gaming, it's like using a standard non SSD hard drive. You prob won't even notice the difference.

If you were to game from the SSD with the SSD in the original port, then you would notice the speed increase. You can prob get like 250 MB/s read/write.

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True use SSD in primry hard drive slot and use a 500gb - 1 terabyte standard hard drive in optical bay so you don't see performance issues.

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