2011 MBP 2nd HDD mod with SSD

I have been trying for days to successfully get Bootcamp 4 +win7 onto my 2011 MBP.
I have modded my MBP to have a second hard drive (ssd in main bay, original 750gb HDD in sled where optical drive used to be.)
SSD is in the main HDD slot, and was put there since the main sata bus is native 6gbs (sata3), where the optical drive bus is sata 2.
So since my ssd is sata3, and the original drive is sata2 it made sense, also it made sense since the main bus is where the computer is designed to boot from.
Ok, so heres what I have done.
I have used Bootcamp, with all combinations of the three boxes checked. (after editing files in my mac i was able to use the "create windows 7 USB installer" function)
I purchased a macbook air super drive (after editing files on my mac, i was able to view and use the drive normally in my OS, but unable to boot from it.) Ended up returning it because an $80 that you can ONLY use on very specific systems is outragous... $25 bucks for a super generic one that has an infinite amount more compatability, or $80 for a locked drive...and here I thought the days of doing stupid proprietary crap to hardware was over
Gparted, testdisk, pdisk, and other table editors have been no help... (cant even get gparted to boot past video drivers, even in vga mode it errors)
I can successfully install windows when i replace the original superdrive that shipped with the system, with the original HDD in the main bay. When I install using this method, as soon as I rebuild my system (ssd main bay, hdd in second bay) my mbp fails to see the windows install (blinking ? folder). I think has to do with the drivers for the 2 sata busses are different.
Holding "alt/option" sees a "Windows" partition that is bootable. when selected, my mbp fails to see the windows install (blinking ? folder)
Disconnected the drive from MBP, connected it to my desktop, viewed / edited in gparted. Same outcome...my mbp fails to see the windows install.
When I follow the main bootcamp instructions for a USB install, I can successfully create a bootable USB with windows 7 on it (works great on my PC) when my computer restarts to install... cant boot from usb, i get the blinking folder (in this config, the drives are in my preffered locations: ssd main bay, hdd in second bay)
Someone said certain USB sticks may not work to boot from... the same USB stick boots up to gparted fine on both my iMac, my PC and this MBP... and the Windows 7 on USB that bootcamp created boots my PC seamlessly. so I doubt its the USB being "unbootable" (just to check this, i erased, reconfigured gparted live USB, and plugged in... not only does it boot, it boots fast, same with a MSDOS recovery USB stick and Unbuntu Live USB)
I disassembled an External DVD drive, and tried about 8 different drives connected directly to the circut board of the external... Can see whatever disc i put in the drive, but only in the OS, Can not boot from any of them (windows dvd shows up as bootable when that disc is in, but selecting it gives me a blinking "_" on a black screen, a black screen, or the message "no bootable devices found, insert boot disc and press any key" depending on where I am at in my process
How on earth should I go about completing this bootcamp install... Im beginning to lose my mind about this.
I have been a computer tech for over 10 years and every logical solution seems to fail for reasons not apparent to me... maybe jobs was in a bad mood when they discussed how my MBP should function.
Why not let me boot from an $80 superdrive?
Why not let me boot Windows 7 installer from anything besides the original drive?
Seriously... Why?
$2000 dollars for a computer should be more than enough cheddar to get a system that isnt locked to Apples way...
I was always a PC loyalist, and my MBP started to change that a little. But then the simple things like... booting from a different source, cant use external drives.
My next best guess on what to do is:
reconfigure the mac to factory, install bootcamp and configure windows on the main HDD bus.
Take out that HDD configured the way i want it.
put in ANOTHER DIFFERENT spare drive.
rebuild
install bootcamp again, go through options, partition drive and when it restarts to install, shut it down
take spare drive
connect both bootcamp drives to my PC, use GParted to compare the partition tables. Edit one to reflect other
restart and see if bootcamp is bootable...
The number one reason i was told i would enjoy my apple...
"it just works"
lmao

SOLVED it for myself like this:
Moved back the HDD from optibay to main bay. Put back the optical drive in and booted off of a windows 7 DVD and installed it on the HDD. Moved the HDD back to optibay and SSD to the main bay. Booted up and holding option/alt showed both Windows and Lion.
Hint: I didn't wanted the win to be installed on my SSD, I am so afraid of imagining what win can do to it
Here is what I experienced:
SSD in main bay, HDD in optibay:
* no boot off of a bootable windows setup on a USB made with:
1- NTFS format (made on mac with Unetbootin)
2- FAT format (made on windows)
3- UDF format (made on mac with direction given here : help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/FromUSBStick )
* no boot off of an external DVD with original windows setup DVD
* boots off mac os original DVD supplied
No SSD, No HDD, No Optical drive:
* no boot from flash/win cd
* boots off mac os original CD supplied
Optical drive in Optibay, SSD or HDD in main bay:
* boot off win DVD
* No USB booting!
* No extrnal DVD booting
Hope this help someone!

Similar Messages

Bluetooth issues on MBP 15 Mid 2012 with SSD OCZ Vertex 4

Hello,
I work on MBP 15 Mid 2012 with SSD OCZ Vertex 4 and I have problem with my bluetooth (mouse sometimes is very slow, laggy, the same problem with keyboard, keys are working with a delay) Unfortunately it happens only with SSD drive and when I have plugged oryginally, apple’s drive everythink it’s ok. Software, firmware are the latest, I tried each reseting (PRAM etc...) and nothing helped. Do you have any ideas?

Same combination and same issue. I see a thread about this here:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/21659917#21659917
My guess is that the SSD is causing interference with the bluetooth somehow.

MacBook Pro 2011 / HDD replace with SSD - power issue

I recently replaced on a MBP 2011 2.5 core5 the 500 MB HDD with a Samsung 850Pro SSD. All went well with regards to cloning throught the apple disk utility.
But i noticed the MBP seems to "burn" more power, meaning the battery life is reduced. It is not clear to me why replace the HDD by the SSD means a shorter battery life. Is there a compability issue with the http://www.samsung.com/us/computer/memory-storage/MZ-7KE1T0BW ?
Any suggestions ?

Sorry, but you typed, "My 2014 model macbook pro 's logic board got damaged."
Apple does not accept trade-ins. You can try selling it on eBay or Craigslist or sell it for cash to companies like Gazelle.com. Then buy a newer model with the proceeds plus added cash, if required.

Problems with 17" 2011 MBP optibay sata speeds for SSD.

I have a 17" early 2011 MBP. I noticed that the optibay SATA is only 3GB/S. Since I need to set up an internal RAID with SSD (SATA III 6Gb/S), and newer versions are now supporting this (I was under the impression that my earlier one would too), what are my options to get the optibay to work at the proper speed? Do I need to replace the MBP? Are there fixes that can be done by Apple repair?
I need this for a number of on site video editing jobs that I need to complete over the next four months. without the RAID set up, i don't see how I can do this. I am also in process of getting the new thunderbolt RAID for in the office.
Can anyone give me advice on how to address this issue? I can swap the system as long as I can pull the current disk drive (and replace with the one that was delivered with the system), if that is what I need to do.
Many thanks in advance.

Hi David,
What little I know about this for sure is that there are at least 2 different optical drive interfaces for the 2011 17" MBP.
I bet you can guess the difference; iirc correctly, the ones that shipped early on have the SATA II interface, while later/current ones have the SATA III. You can check yours in System Profiler, but again, I bet you know already. Again, iirc, the early ones cannot be updated to run at SATA III/6Gbps.
I don't know any of the above with 100% certainty, so I would continue looking/asking, but if it is correct, that means you'd need a new MBP (and need to make sure it's newer stock; what the cutoff is, I have no idea). fwiw

Late 2011 MBP i7 gets slow with and after Aperture

My first post, please pardon my ignorance. I have read similar threads but I believe my situation is a bit different.
Anyway, my late 2011 MBP i7 4GB ram, running on SL gets very slow after I open/browse/edit in Aperture. The system does page out to 1.3 gb. When using Safary and email, it becomes very painfull even after I close out the Aperture. The whole system becomes laggy and menus become delayed. The only solution is to reboot and my mac is back like new until I open the Aperture again. Every program is up to date and only about 160gb out of 500gb HDD being used.
Heres what I've done so far:
1. long hardware test checked ok
2. NVRAM reset
3. downloaded Kasperski and found no viruses
4. rebuild/repair aperture database
5. ordered 8gb crucial ram, should be in in a few days
Is it due to not having enough RAM? My previous 2006 MBP Core 2 Due was almost as fast running on Lion and 4GB ram. I would expect a significant speed increase on my 4 core i7, but unfortunately it's not the case.

Paging out to 1.3 gig effectively means that a lot of stuff is sitting in virtual memory on your hard disk. The i7 is great for improving the speed of whatever is in memory, but anything that is paged out is limited to the performance of the HDD and SATA bus.
The cheapest and most effective first step is to max out your RAM. It's a modest investment that will benefit you immensely. The second step is to replace mechanical disks with SSDs. Currently, this is a pricy proposition, but the performance improvement can be nearly 100% over a mechanical drive system.
At the end of the day, it's about how much money you want to spend to go as fast as you can afford.

Why won't my 2011 MBP boot from my new SSD?

I had MicroCenter install the drive without issue using a OWC DataDoubler in the optical bay. I know the newer MBPs have a 6GBPS controller for the optical bay but my SSD--a 128GB Kingston V100+ (SNVP325S2128GB)--is 3 GBPS so it wouldn't make a difference. Besides, I wanted to keep the SMS for my 750GB WD HD.
The SSD is readable and writeable in Snow Leopard (10.6.7), booted from my standard HD. The only way I could install OS X on it was via Target Disk Mode using my wife's 2008 MBP, which completed without error.
I have tried holding the Option key on startup and selecting the SSD, as well as booting into the standard HD installation and setting the SSD as the Startup Disk in System Preferences. Neither works.
The SSD was formatted with one Mac OS Extended (Journaled) GUID partition.
I have tried resetting PRAM and NVRAM to no avail.
Any ideas?

Fair enough. I'll give that a try as a last resort.
I used my wife's MacBook Pro, Target Disk Mode and a Firewire 800 cable to install Snow Leopard on my MacBook Pro as I don't have an internal optical drive any more--just the standard HD and the SSD.
I did use the retail disc, and I'm wondering if the issue might be that since my machine is fairly new, I might have had to use the stock install disk--which I seem to have lost. I have the Applications DVD, but not the OS disc.
To that end, do you know of a way to get a replacement disc? I bought my machine at the store, I wonder if they'd be willing to copy one for me...

Early 2008 MBP, replaced optical drive with SSD, now computer won't sleep.

So pretty much you know everything already, installed the operating system on the SSD everything works fine except the computer wont sleep.
Any help wouldbe great
thanks

I am about to do the same upgrade on MBP 13". Reading around the topic I think this problem is caused when the OS is running from the drive in the optical bay.
See extract from following link:
http://lifehacker.com/5541774/how-to-install-a-solid+state-drive-in-your-macbook
Update: It seems that connecting the SSD to the optical drive slot will give you problems waking from sleep, since the MacBook doesn't look to that SATA port for your main drive. I did not notice this before, as I don't sleep my computer. So, instead of installing your SSD in the Optibay, you'll want to disconnect your regular hard drive, install the SSD in that slot, and then install your old drive in the Optibay and continue as written.

2nd HDD bay with HDD = notebook won't boot with HDD in 2nd HDD bay

I recently came into a Pavilion DV9308 Notebook. It was in decent shape, well looked new and since I like tinkering with laptops and the motherboard had the dreaded NVIDIA GPU failure going on, I sent the motherboard out to my motherboard dude and he put a newer NVIDIA video chip in, made some adjustments and modifications to the heatsink cooler etc. Along with my modifications including vent holes and sealing up the fan blowing assembly so when the fan turned on the hot air would leave the laptop it now runs Windows 7 64 bit with a 64GB Kingston OS SSHD and 4GB DDR2 800mhz ram. It runs like lightning and impresses people when they see it boot up in 15 seconds.
The problem is and the whole reason I picked this notebook to restore is because it has two acutal hard drive bays. Well ever since I've gotten the notebook It will not boot with a hard drive in both bays or a hard drive in Bay #2. I had to send the repaired motherboard back once because one of the ram slots wasn't working so this is happening on two different motherboards. I cannot find a reason why this is happening and have yet to find anyone that can help me with this. Can anyone explain to me what I'm doing wrong? I have all the correct drivers I think and the laptop runs at 130"F when pushed to the max! That is amazing compared to what it originally ran. It would be awesome if someone could please help me with this. Thanks.

Hello jason9922. I understand your notebook won't boot with a hard drive in the second bay.
When you say that the notebook won't boot with a drive in the second bay what exactly do you mean? Does the CAPS LOCK key flash or do you get an error?
When you have the hard drive installed can you access the BIOS? If so, is the hard drive detected within the BIOS?
I'll keep an eye out for your response. Have a great day!
Please click the white star under my name to give me Kudos as a way to say "Thanks!"
Click the "Accept as Solution" button if I resolve your issue.

BootCamp on Late 2011 MBP Question.

I don't know where to start but here goes. I've had boot camp w/ Win7 32bit on my MBP for sometime now with the original HD. I upgraded to a SSD, and removed the optical drive and put the original HDD there. recently decided to upgrade the original HDD to 1TB and CarbonCopy Cloner does not support cloning Boot Camp partitions. So heres what I did to get BC back on my MBP. I cloned my SSD to the new HDD. Removed the SSD and reinstalled the optical drive so I can use BC to partition and install Win7 on the new 1TB HD. The reason why I did that was because my MBP does not support booting from external USB CD-ROM. Now after I got Win7 up and running I removed the optical drive, moved the 1TB HDD back over and reinstalled my SSD as the main boot disk.
Now here comes my real question. Can I wipe the OS X Partition on the 1TB disk or will it cause problems with BootCamp ?
Thanks in advance
System info:
Late 2011 MBP
16GB Ram
Crucial 512GB SSD
WD 1TB in optical drive bay
2.4 GHz Intel Core i5
OSX Yosemite 10.10.2

gpt show: /dev/disk1: mediasize=1000204886016; sectorsize=512; blocks=1953525168
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Suspicious MBR at sector 0
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Pri GPT at sector 1
gpt show: /dev/disk1: Sec GPT at sector 1953525167
       start        size index contents
           0           1         MBR
           1           1         Pri GPT header
           2          32         Pri GPT table
          34           6
          40      409600      1 GPT part - C12A7328-F81F-11D2-BA4B-00A0C93EC93B
      409640 1759493968      2 GPT part - 48465300-0000-11AA-AA11-00306543ECAC
1759903608      262280
1760165888   193357824      3 GPT part - EBD0A0A2-B9E5-4433-87C0-68B6B72699C7
1953523712        1423
1953525135          32         Sec GPT table
1953525167           1         Sec GPT header

Can I place a 13" retina display panel into my 2011 MBP?

I was wondering (moreso wishing and hoping) if it's possible to have my 2011 MBP display panel replaced with the recent 13" retina display panel. My 2011 MBP is just out of warranty and its display panel has developed a green line issue that seems too common among MBP displays.
Thanks!

The best option would be to take this to Apple and pay for it to be fixed. The display will be expensive to fix, so if you feel you can, purchasing a replacement from eBay or somewhere online would be possible. You can not fit a Retina display on as the hings and connectors are different, and even if they were not, the firmware and drivers your Mac will have (and continue to have as the model number tells the system you should have a standard display) can not drive the higher resolution efficiently. This would lead to performance and battery issues.
Consider buying a desktop stand and display for your Mac as well and use the built in display only when necessary. Small problems with LCDs usually develop into worse situations quickly.
Good luck!

Silverlight (Lovefilm / Netflix) MBP 13" Early 2011, Heating and Exhaust Problems, Clamshell mode with TB Display

Hi all
I was hoping if someone can help me out...
I have a:
Mac Book Pro 13" (Early 2011) (i5, Crucial 8GB RAM, 120 OWC 6G SSD)
Apple Thunderbolt Display
I run my MBP in clamshell mode always.
Whenever i run Netflix or Lovefilm video in full screen using either Firefox, Chrome or Safari. The Silverlight plug-in is hogging the CPU.
My exhaust (CPU fan) goes crazy, its soo loud its annoying while your trying to watch a movie on your Thunderbolt Display.
Temperature reaches: 83 Celsius
Fan (Exhaust): 5620 - 6200 RPM (immediately jumps from 2001 to 5620 / 6200)
If i watch a movie full screen on my 13" MBP with my Thunderbolt display disconnected:
Temperature reaches: 81 Celsius
Fan (Exhaust): 3198 RPM (it slowly crawls up form 1998 to 3193)
Now i changed my resolution on my Thunderbolt disply to 1420x720 and it helps with the fans going crazy, they slow down slightly...
I've tried a PRAM and SMC Reset, all my firmware is up to date.
My Macbook Pro is slightly raised at the back so air can flow through the vents.
My FANS are just going crazy!! something is ridicously heating up internally in my machine causing them to go mental.
You just cannot watch a movie on netflix or lovefilm on your thunderbolt display comfortably if your fans go beyound 2800RPM.
I even installed Windows 7 on Virtual Box and tried running lovefilm / silverlight and it did not help my problem.
PLEASE CAN SOMEONE HELP! how can i keep my fans below 2800 RPM while running silverlight?!?!

Flash like Silverlight are CPU heavy applications.
The MacBook Pro can be run in clamshell mode but only when not running extremely CPU intensive tasks
like what you are doing.
If you keep the mac book running this way for too long you might stress the materials and run into danger of getting thermal damages.
Chrome is actually in recent time getting very slow and I noticed in a comparision test that Firefox provides me up to 30 to 40% more free CPU time.
If running netflix I would suggest currently NOT using Chrome.
Windows 7 virtualized inside virtual box and then on top netflix is uhm a pretty bad idea because all those three things together are already CPU hogs.

MBP 2012 (not retina) replace HD with 2011 MBP SSD?

I have an early 2011 MBP 13in with an Intel SSD running Lion. Wonderful computer. SSD runs like a champ. However, I just bought the 2012 15in (NOT RETINA) MBP, and I want to replace the HD in the 2012 MBP with the SSD from my 2011 MBP. Can I remove the HD from the 2012 MBP, put the SSD from the 2011 MBP into the new 2012 MBP and it will simply work? If it's not quite that simple, what steps must I take to get the SSD from the 2011 MBP working in the 2012 (NOT RETINA) MBP?
(Oh, and for those that are curious...I am not interested in the retina MBP because the RAM and SSD are soldered into the board. No thanks.)

and as most unbelievable things its not true, you can still replace the SSD on both the retina and non retina macbooks. Ram in the only thing you cant replace because of it being soldered (on the retina only).
The ssd in the retina is proprietary so we have to wait for someone to release a compatable module, but it does infact unscrew and come out.
The non-retina macbooks should be as upgradable (hdd and ram wise) as much as the 2011 edition.

Question regarding SSD/HDD setup in late 2011 MBP

Sorry to start a new thread about this topic but I couldn't find the information I needed.
I'm about to install a 256gb SSD in place of the standard 500gb HDD in my late 2011 MBP, replacing the optical drive with the existing HDD. I don't really want to do a clean install, so I'm planning on using carbon copy cloner.
My question is how do I clone only the necessary files (my 400gb of data won't all fit on the SSD)?
I'm planning on putting all apps, system files, both libraries and the shared folder on the SSD, with music, docs, movies, photos and downloads remaining on the HDD.
Is it as simple as:
-select all necessary folders in CCC and clone to SSD
-boot from SSD
-delete cloned files from HDD
-redirect itunes etc to new paths
Thanks in advance.

I have a MacBook Pro 2.4ghz (MacBookPro8,2) (Late 2011) .. would you be able to tell me based on these screenshots if I would be okay putting a 6G SSD in my optical drive bay? Thank you!!

2011 MBP with SSD/Time Machine Issues

Early-2011 MBP (MacBookPro8,2)
8GB RAM
240 GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD (newly installed)
750 GB HD (original boot drive, now with the user folder on a 500 GB partition and a 250 GB Windows boot camp partition)
I replaced my 750 GB boot drive with the OWC SSD recently and put a fresh install of Mavericks (10.9) on the new drive. I used the OWC bracket and moved my old 750 GB drive to the optical drive bay. Erased and reformatted the 500 GB partition (on the 750GB drive) as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) drive. I moved my Home folder to the Mac partition. I've since reinstalled apps and replaced my Home folder contents from a clone I made.
When I try to run Time Machine (either via a directly connected HD or via Time Capsule) I end up with the machine freezing up. It doesn't always totally freeze up, but once I try to click around or open the Finder or an Application I end up with the beach ball and end up having to do a hard reboot (hold power button til it shuts down). If I don't wait awhile before restarting sometimes the machine won't find the startup disk. It does seem like Time Machines starts... as it does start writing the backup record. It never finishes though.
Based on some of the other threads I've read I ran the following command:
find ~ $TMPDIR.. $ -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 -o -acl $ 2> /dev/null | wc -l
And was given the number "235".
Any pointers?

There's no simple or easy way to do that, and it depends on your circumstances. See Transferring Home Folders not on a Startup volume for some suggestions.

Which kind of SSD hard discs do support with earlier 2011 MBP ?

Which kind of SSD hard discs do support with earlier 2011 MBP ?
I'm using 15 inch earlier 2011 MBP. I would like to replace hard disc to a new SSD hard disc to improve performance. But I don't know which kind of SSD works fine for it. Does anyone work fine? Could you give me some successful experience? Thanks a lot.
BTW, Can I use SATA3 SSD? And any problems here?
Thanks a lot!

is it a hard questions?

2011 MBP 2nd HDD mod with SSD

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for