Better to use optical bay or drive bay for SSD?

Just bought a mid-2012 MacPro. Also purchased a Crucial 512GB SSD drive, which I intend to use for a boot drive. I know that I can install the drive in one of the four slide out drive bays. From what I can gather, it doesn't matter which bay I use, Mac will boot equally well from any of them. My question is: What about the second optical bay? Is there any advantage to putting the SSD there? (other than keeping another slot open for HDD?) Have tried to research this a bit, but the model is brand-new, not a lot of info out there.. Mucho thanks!

The model is not "new" it is just a tiny change in processor options, everything else is unchanged.
To use in standard bays you need to use an adapter to fit. If you put it in the optical bay if you are like me, it will get moved, put on its side, so again, might want to 'tie it down."
But it doesn't matter which location.
With 512GB you probably are going to use it for much more than just the boot drive. Maybe Aperture or other libraries.
As for research, there are products and reviews and Mac centric sites such as
http://www.macperformanceguide.com - click on Articles & Topics

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If I don't want to use my Seagate hard drive anymore for Time Machine...How do I go about this?

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chenango232 wrote:
Missing a pretty big step here.... How does one install a new OS on an external drive? You can't install an OS without first booting into an OS. I don't have a disk to boot to, but have gotten as far as downloading the install software. Perhaps the answer you should be providing is that I need to create an install disk somehow?
Is not the current HDD in your MBP a boot drive? If so and you have Yosemite installed, you can boot into the recovery partition. From the 4 option menu you can use Disk Utility. If you have the NEW HDD connected to the MBP it will appear in Disk Utility. Click on that drive to format in Disk Utility>Erase. After formatting, go to the 'Reinstall OSX' option and install the OSX onto the external HDD. When finished swap the drives.
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TD340 3.5" to 2.5" drive adapter for SSD

I'm looking for a proper 3.5" to 2.5" drive adapter in order to install a couple 2.5" SSDs into my TD340 server with 8x3.5" bays. I just spent a solid 30+ min. on the phone with Lenovo, got transferred literally 8 times to other departments (some twice) and got absolutely nowhere.
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Solved!
Go to Solution.

Thank you for replying again Nivek but that answer is not valid at least for me, no offense.
I would have been happy to buy engineered/designed Lenovo supported hardware to fulfill my needs but instead I had to track it down elsewhere. I'm know for a fact I'm not the only person with this need based on my research for this solution. As there are probably tens of thousands of servers sold with 3.5" backplanes is it not expected by Lenovo that some of those customers at some point might want to use drives such as SSD's as capacities increase in the future? So what are they supposed to do, swap out those 3.5" backplanes for 2.5" ones and then have to replace all of their drives as well? I think not.
I just think Lenovo is just missing an opportunity to further help it's customers is all. Again, no offense to you but your answer is not a valid solution.
Thanks,
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Is it better to install windows on the same mac hard drive or use the second hard drive bay as it's own? Im also using deploy studio and am having trouble creating a workflow to assign the bay.

Have mac pros with 1tb drives in tem. Trying to figure out imaging via deploy studio.

For the easist install and problem solving having W7 on it's own disk would be the best way to go.
The only thing you need to do is either take out the lower # drives ahead of the future Windows disk or put the Windows HD in bay/slot #1. (or just take out all but the future W7 disk and install it manually works too)
The easiest way would be to put the W7 drive in slot slot/bay #1 then you can still use BC Assistant to install the drivers and such.
After the install you can have the Windows drive in any slot you want.
I'm not familier with Deploy Studio so can't help you beyond this.

Optical on the Drive Bay?!

Hello Guys!
So I was wondering what would happen if I plugged in something into the optical out slot in my fatalty dri've bay. This is with 5. speakers plugged into the soundcard itself and a microphone plugged into the "flexijack" slot.
Would it be able to tell that I want optical output only? Would it output both 5. and optical? Would my microphone work with optical? Do I have to plug my microphone into the annoying "Line In 2/Mic In 2"? Because I really would prefer not as most games automatically select Mic #.
Thanks!

bumpity

Drive sleep for SSD?

I have a solid state drive in my MBP and had read that they perform better when you do not allow the computer to put the drive to sleep.
Can someone validate this for me or let me know if there is a better or worse way to manage the SSD in my MBP?
thanks in advance
Marc

In reality, hard drive sleeping almost never happens when a machine is powered on. There is almost always some level of disk access which prevents the drive from sleeping. Having said that, all sleeping a hard drive does is power down the spindle to conserve some power. I don't really believe it saves on any wear and tear as constantly starting and stopping is more wear than just running continuously. There is no benefit to sleeping an SSD as there are no platters to spin down.

P55-GD65 - SATA port and driver installs for SSD ?

Please can anyone help...
I have a MSI P55-GD65 mb (AMI BIOS v1.2/012.020.000.015) and am about to do a clean install of Win 7 64 bit onto an unused Crucial M4 SSD (firmware rev 010G). After disconnecting my existing HDD from SATA1.....
Q1 Should I update the mb BIOS? I currently have no probs....if it aint broke....
Q2 Which SATA port should I connect the SSD to?
   SATA 1-6 ports are Intel P55, SATA7 is supported by JMicron JMB363
Assuming the next steps are:
   plug CD/DVD drive into SATA 4
   boot into the BIOS, enable AHCI and set the SSD as the primary boot drive after the CD/DVD drive
   boot from the Windows 7 disc and install the OS,
Q3What do I do about installing drivers?
Allow any default drivers to install from Win7, then install drivers from the mb disc (starting with chipset drivers), then update them with the latest from MSI. Or what?
I understand that rebooting after installing each driver (and the updates) is a good idea (NickN from SimForums), but this suggests a lot of reboots !
If some reboots can be left till several drivers are in, at which points should reboots be done if there are 5 or 6 drivers+updates to install? I wouldn't be bothering with any RAID configuration or the floppy drivers.
Finally..
Q4 At what point do I perform the firmware update of the Crucial SSD (to rev 040H) ? I'm assuming a driver install will be required for this.
Thanks

Quote
Q1 Should I update the mb BIOS? I currently have no probs....if it aint broke....
If all is well don't do anything.
Quote
Q2 Which SATA port should I connect the SSD to?
SATA 1-6 ports are Intel P55, SATA7 is supported by JMicron JMB363
All of the ports are SATA II, so any port 1-6 would be fine. I suggest port 1 or the purchase of a sata III card. IE:
http://www.amazon.com/SIIG-SATA-6Gb-2-Port-PCIe/dp/B006Q4MGOM/ref=sr_1_3?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1368545006&sr=1-3&keywords=sata+iii+card
Although I won't make a huge amount of difference.
Quote
Q3What do I do about installing drivers?
Allow any default drivers to install from Win7, then install drivers from the mb disc (starting with chipset drivers), then update them with the latest from MSI. Or what?
I leave the internet disconnected until I have loaded all of the drivers. I also generally do an F6 installation with the most recent AHCI / Raid drivers available if applicable.
Once all of the drivers are install, I connect the internet and let it update.
Quote
Q4 At what point do I perform the firmware update of the Crucial SSD (to rev 040H) ? I'm assuming a driver install will be required for this.
If there is a firmware update available, the best thing to do would be to install the ssd in another computer, update the firmware, then place it in your computer. (or keep the existing hdd in for a moment to do this)
Data loss is very possible during an ssd firmware update.

T60 drive bay adapters and HDDs

I was wondering, are there manufacturers of internal hard drives that work better or worse with the t60 drive bay adapter than others? I heard sometimes people have trouble with hard drives being too noisy or unstable within the adapter.
Thanks in advance.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

not really, you may want to use a 5400 rpm rather than the 7200 rpm version.
Regards,
Jin Li
May this year, be the year of 'DO'!
I am a volunteer, and not a paid staff of Lenovo or Microsoft

Using optical mice as input devices

Hi,
I'm doing a robotics research project, looking at the possibility of using optical mouse-style CMOS sensors for motion tracking. To this end, I'm building a simple machine with LEGO Mindstorms, and I intend to attach two optical mice to this and feed their output into LabView.
Ideally, I'd like to plug both mice into USB ports. Can anyone help me with these two problems?
1. How to get input from two mice simultaneously? i.e. how to differentiate between them.
2. How to have LabView process USB input? I imagine there will be an ActiveX control for them (which leads back to question 1...)
Thanks for your help. Yours,
Gareth.

ghann wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm doing a robotics research project, looking at the possibility of
> using optical mouse-style CMOS sensors for motion tracking. To this
> end, I'm building a simple machine with LEGO Mindstorms, and I intend
> to attach two optical mice to this and feed their output into LabView.
>
> Ideally, I'd like to plug both mice into USB ports. Can anyone help me
> with these two problems?
>
> 1. How to get input from two mice simultaneously? i.e. how to
> differentiate between them.
>
> 2. How to have LabView process USB input? I imagine there will be an
> ActiveX control for them (which leads back to question 1...)
>
> Thanks for your help. Yours,
>
> Gareth.
You are going to conflict with the OS mouse driver. The OS will detect
the USB mouse and install a driver for it and you won't be able to get
your arms around that. Why don't you use two PS/2 mice with serial
converter plugs? That way you just use COM ports and the mouse protocol
is well known. If you go USB I think you will spend all of your time
dicking around trying to force it to do something it wasn't designed to
do. The real problem is that there is only one cursor so you won't be
able to differentiate positioning inputs.
Otherwise, hook up two USB mice, glue the right button down on one and
see if you can distiguish button down moves from button up moves
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Which hard drive option for pro apps use on new Macbook Pro?

I'm trying to decide b/t either a 500 GB 7200 drive or the 1 TB 5200 drive on my new 17" MBP. I mostly use FCP, but am learning the other apps as well. The salesman told me today that:
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Does this, especially #2, sound right? If so, I'd definitely take the 1 TB option. But any info or thoughts on this are greatly appreciated, especially as the MBP will be replacing my G5.
Thanks ahead of time for any help!

Oh sure, I know it's always advisable to use a separate video drive. A SSD and that Caldigit VR mini do sound like a great combo and thanks for the heads up about them, but that would be something down the road for me. SSD boot drives aren't big enough for me and are too pricy at this point for my budget. I do plan on using some external storage as my video when I'm editing something bigger than SD. But right now I'm just trying to figure out what my best option is for the boot drive. Primarily I trying to find out if the boot affects the performance of FCP (and the other Pro Apps) when using external storage. If it doesn't, then I know what I should buy.
Thanks!

Driver question for SoundBlaser Live 5.1 card installed in D

Greetings:
I have just completed a clean install of WXP and SP2. Is it better to use the SoundBlaster 5. driver on the Dell site or the one on the Creative Labs site? It looks like there are several to choose from on the Creative Labs site. Can someone please indicate the proper choice?
Thank you.

Thanks Shingo-Y:
I saw a driver on the Creative Lab site listed as SoundBlaster 5. Li've for Dell and thought this might work but perhaps I should play it safe and just install my original driver from the Dell CD.
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Can I use the 2nd Optical Drive Bay on my Mac Pro for an SSD?

Since I have no plans to add a second Optical Drive to my Mac Pro in the Second Optical Drive bay, I was wondering if I could put an SSD in that bay using a 2.5' to 3.5" drive carriage. Is this possible? Would it work? Would I be able to use it as my boot drive? Never tried this, so not sure if it would work.
Thanks in advance.

Your 2010 model has SATA wiring in that bay, so the SSD plugs right in.
Macs can boot from the drive specified in System preferences > Startup Disk.
You would need an adapter from 2.5 size of the drive to the 5.25 (CD drive) size expected, but since there are no moving parts, most folks just dump the drive in there without a bracket.
The biggest payback comes from establishing a Boot Drive with only System, Library, Applications, and the hidden Unix files including Paging/Swap. Putting the boot drive on an SSD is frosting -- it provides an incremental improvement over a spinning Boot drive.
A caution when establishing your drive -- some users have killed brand new SSD drives by cloning onto them. The manufacturers have not been helpful in telling us why this happens, but a clean Install may be a better way to proceed.

I have a Mac pro(1 free bay) and a mac mini I need to back both of them Is it better to use an external NAS HD or an internal hard drive on my mac pro (mid 2010) What option has the faster GB/s?

I have a Mac pro(1 free bay) and a mac mini I need to back up both of them (time machine) Is it better to use an external NAS HD or an internal hard drive on my mac pro (mid 2010)
What option has the faster GB/s?

Disk drive using native SATA bus interface will allow the drive to copy and always present and ready.
But once you have backup any hourly changes should be smaller and as long as the NAS and your switch should allow enough.
You should always have off line backups and don't rely on just one backup set or just TimeMachine.
WD RED models are designed for RAID and NAS and 7.2k instead of your more standard slower green 5400 rpm green models while still costing less than WD Blacks.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008JJLW4M/
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http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone.html
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
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http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
http://www.bombich.com/software/updates/ccc-3.5.html
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Add a 2nd HDD using the CD/DVD Optical Drive Bay

Hi HP,I,m going to add a 2nd HDD for my laptop bu using CD/DVD optical drive bay,so,i don't know if optical drive connection support SATA 2 or SATA3? And where i can buy a bay for 2nd HDD( good quality)? Tks a lot!
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Dảkwarrior1912 wrote:
Why hard drive conection support SATA 3 but optical drive support SATA2??As i know the other notebook like asus or dell support SATA 3 both conection(hard drive and optical drive)
It appears that you did not understand the post that I made.
If you purchase a high end notebook that has a chipset with sata controllers that support SATA3 then SATA3 devices will run at SATA3 bandwidth. Your notebook is not one that does.
It would not matter which brand you chose.
If you decided to economize and purchase a mainstream notebook, then the issue would still be the same.
Notebooks are not created equally. It is the same with desktop PCs.
That is why each manufacturer has a tiered structure to accomodate the economic means of the target market.
1) Entry level (basic chipset and CPU) $
2) Mainstream (mid level chipset and mainstream CPU) $$
3) High end. (high end chipset and high performance CPU, wifi adapter and even SSD hard disks) $$$
****Please click on Accept As Solution if a suggestion solves your problem. It helps others facing the same problem to find a solution easily****
2015 Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience Consumer

Putting a SSD in the optical drive bay of a late 2011 MacBook Pro.

I want to put a large Solid State Drive in the optical drive bay of my late 2011 (Model ID 8,2, 2.4 GHZ quad i7, 8 Gigs RAM, SSD boot drive) using the carrier and drive from Other World Computing. The "About This Mac" box shows that the optical drive is 6G so I'm thinking that it should be OK putting a 6G drive in that bay, but OWC says that MacBook Pros have only a 3G optical drive capability. I know this was true on earlier models, but my bay says 6G.   The 6 G SSD's are faster and have a longer warranty. I do pro audio work and want to record to the new drive with speed and reliability. Is there any way to prove that my MBPro will handle 6G? I was told by someone at OWC who looked up my my serial number that it would work, but another tech guy at OWC said they didn't recommend it. I'm thinking that they just issue a blanket "no" answer to cover themselves against people ordering a 6G drive for a machine that wouldn't handle it. Before I order a 6G drive is there a way I can know for sure if it will work?
Many thanks,
Robert

If the computer is correctly identified as 15-inch Late 2011 MacBook Pro, and not an Early 2011 build series,
according to MacTracker database (http://mactracker.ca download application) optical drive interface supports
the same spec as the hard disk drive...
Hard Drive Interface    6.0 Gbps Serial ATA (SATA)
Optical Drive Interface    6.0 Gbps Serial ATA (SATA)
So should there be an error in identification, that would make a difference. Some Early 2011 models may
have the 3.0 Gbps or 6.0Gbps data rate in the optical drive. All Late 2011 models should be 6.0 Gbps.
Good luck & happy computing!

Better to use optical bay or drive bay for SSD?

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